On May 27, 2008 I attended a special meeting of the Eureka Planning Commission. According to the posted notice, the agenda was ordinance updates.
At the meeting, planning commission members discussed specific proposals for changing the township ordinances. They were working from a printed document that contained the specific proposals.
The Open Meeting Law requires that, for all public meetings:
at least one copy of any printed materials relating to the agenda items of the meeting prepared or distributed by or at the direction of the governing body or its employees and:
(1) distributed at the meeting to all members of the governing body;
(2) distributed before the meeting to all members; or
(3) available in the meeting room to all members;
shall be available in the meeting room for inspection by the public while the governing body
considers their subject matter.
At that meeting, the Planning Commission did not make available for inspection a copy of the printed materials being discussed by the Planning Commission. This made it difficult to follow the discussion.
I told the Commission members that, without being able to see the proposed ordinance changes, it was impossible to follow what they were talking about. Sharon Buckley did give me an extra copy of an email and memorandum from township attorney Trevor Oliver, but said that there were no extra copies of the other document(s) that they were reviewing at the meeting. I asked if the proposed ordinance revisions were available on line and was told that they were not.
At the end of the meeting, Ken Olstad said that he would ask Nanett to email me a copy of the current draft of the ordinance revisions. I thanked him.
A week went by without receiving the email from Nanett, so I emailed her to follow up and make sure that she had my email address.
Another week went by without any response. I forwarded my previous email to Ken Olstad, with a note to him. Here are copies of my emails:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Fwd: Re: special meeting notice]
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:05:27 -0500
From: Carol S. Cooper <cooper@cscooperlaw.com>
To: ken.olstad@pobox.com
Ken, I haven't heard from Nanett on this.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: special meeting notice
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:23:34 -0500
From: Carol S. Cooper <cooper@cscooperlaw.com>
To: Nanett Sandstrom <eurekatn@frontiernet.net>
References: <000001c8c526$e201b150$6501a8c0@EUREKA2>
Nanett, last week I attended the special planning commission meeting where they discussed the ordinance updates. Ken Olstad said he would send you an email asking you to email me the ordinance update draft the commission is working on. I thought I'd follow up on that because I'm not sure whether Ken had my email address to give you.
Carol S. Cooper
C. S. Cooper Law Firm, Ltd.
26437 Galaxie Ave.
Farmington, MN 55024
Phone: (651) 460-2056
Fax: (651) 294-1038
cooper@cscooperlaw.com
website: www.cscooperlaw.com
Now it's the morning of June 12. I just talked to Nanett about this and she said she's still waiting to receive the document from Ken Olstad. Curiously, there is also no mention of the May 27 special meeting on the minutes page of the township website.
The Open Meeting Law has pretty serious penalties for violations of its provisions, including forfeiture of office. Do the Planning Commission members know this?
It's not really a lot to ask that "at least one copy" of printed materials being discussed be made available. If our local government wanted us to know what was going on, they would go further than that statutory minimum and make documents available on line and make more than the miserly "one copy" available at meetings.
I don't mean to imply that providing the document(s) after the meeting is somehow belated compliance with the Open Meeting Law. It isn't. The Planning Commission violated this provision of the Open Meeting Law at its May 27, 2008 meeting because there were no copies of the documents the members were discussing made available to the public.
Please don't misunderstand me. I have no more desire to sue Planning Commission members for this violation than I have to stub my toe and fall on my face in the gravel, but the lack of responsiveness in following up on this promised email makes me wonder if there's any other way to find out what's going on.
