Red Oak council still costing taxpayers unnecessary cost with paper of record

RED OAK – The Red Oak City Council once again chose the Waxahachie Daily Light as their official paper of record for another year with the alternate paper The Dallas Morning News.

The paper of record in a city is the paper public notices are published for residents to be aware of upcoming meetings, budgets, tax rates and public hearings. 

Most newspapers in Ellis County and locally have gone to a weekly publication schedule, including WDL, versus daily since the pandemic.

In August, the city did not use the WDL to announce important public hearing dates for the proposed fiscal year 2024 annual budget or the new fiscal year city’s tax rate due to the weekly versus daily dilemma.

Red Oak City Manager Todd Fuller said at that time, “The City of Red Oak utilizes the Waxahachie Daily Light as its official newspaper and the Dallas Morning News as the official alternate newspaper.

“The city attempts to use the Waxahachie Daily Light whenever possible, but it is only published once per week and occasionally State mandated publication schedules cannot be met with a weekly newspaper. 

“In these instances the Dallas Morning News is utilized as the official alternate newspaper since it is a daily publication.”

That cost city taxpayers more than $7,000 to run notices in the Dallas Morning News in August to announce budget and tax rate public hearings since the city was not able to meet the deadline for running the notice in the WDL. 

Residents also would not have known to look for the public hearing dates in the DMN, since the WDL is the paper of record.

When seeking bids for the new fiscal year paper of record for Oct. 1, 2023, the same newspapers were chosen again, despite the fact the city had the dilemma with a weekly versus daily newspaper in August. 

One local daily paper still left in the area is Focus Daily News, a less expensive option than the DMN. According to FDN, their bid was sent to be considered since they are locally owned and Waxahachie Daily Light is not, owned by Cherry Hill Media out of New Jersey, and the Dallas Morning News is an expensive alternative when deadlines are not met for publication in the WDL. 

The Ellis County Press did not submit a bid this year.