COAL GROVE — One Coal Grove councilman is asking why council meeting are no longer being recorded.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, Councilman Randy Wise asked Village Clerk Debbie Fields why she no longer recorded the meetings on tape. Wise has been on council for the past 12 years and said the meetings have always been taped.

Fields said she stopped recording the meetings about the second meeting of July because of a problem with the recording device and started taking notes by hand.

“I asked them if it was OK to start hand-recording the minutes,” Fields said, saying that she asked council the first meeting she did not have the device.

Fields also said she then types the minutes and distributes them to council about two days before the meetings so they can look over them.

“So far they have seemed satisfied,” she said.

Wise made a motion Tuesday to begin recording the meetings again, so the village would be protected if there were ever any disputes about things said in the meetings.

“We have nothing to fall back on,” Wise said.

The motion died for lack of a second.

“I’ll definitely bring it up again at the next meeting,” Wise said, adding that he was not aware that the meetings were no longer being recorded until that night.

Fields offered to begin recording the meetings again if council thought her minutes were not thorough enough.