Reader Feedback: Local Government Minutes

In this week's , Patch readers talked about whether or not they think local governments should be required to take complete, word-for-word, minutes.

In the poll, 68 percent of voters said yes to 31 percent no.

Below are the comments from the discussion. Feel free to add to the discussion using the comments section below these:

I was present Monday night when it was disclosed that for some months now verbatim minutes have not been published when members of the public address the Trustees during the public portion of the meeting. It was explaiined that because there has been an uptick in the number of people speaking that the volume of content that needs to be transcribed has overwhelmed the one village employee assigned to that task. As a result brief and I mean brief notations are presented instead to designate what a person said

I told the Board that this was not a good policy. I do understand where the volume of words that needs to be transcribed has become overwhelming but it is a loss to stop printing the actual words spoken by a member of the public to the Board. That does not strike me as a true and authentic record of the meeting's events

It turns out that legally the village is not required to post verbatim remarks. That being the case I think a harsh but practical solution would be to limit the time that a person can speak to five minutes. Most boards have such rules. That would severely cut down the content that has to be recorded and reprinted. Comments would be smaller but at least fully reported instead of appearing as gibberish as they do now.

Once again this also points to the need for televised meetings too. That would get around the problem entirely by presenting the truest and most complete record of the meeting.

I urge the Board to reconsider this policy.

The Patchogue Village board meeting minutes are a total disgrace. My granddaughter could take neater and more accurate notes. Who is doing them that Clerk Seal or her assistant the Deputy Clerk? The Deputy Clerk doesn’t have too much on her plate for the money she is paid…what’s the deal? Get your acts together and get with the times! Get with the program! We deserve to see what people actually say not what you want us to hear. You can’t be this sloppy with government records. This is how they have botched deals in the past….because no one has an accurate record of what was actually said. Maybe they aren’t just sloppy after all but deliberately obfuscating the public portion of the meetings. After all, a murky record can’t be used against them…can it?

Due to family & work issues, I have had to miss the meetings. I rely on those minutes to keep me abreast of issues in the Village. The official part of the meeting is verbatim, but the public Q&A is lacking. 
This issue makes the need for the minutes to be either taped &/or make a podcast and post them on the website. The podcast is substantially cheaper than having someone have to transcribe all of the minutes - a fiscally responsible way to get ALL of the minutes out to the public & help create a more transparent government. Funny as I wanted to suggest doing a podcast instead of telecasting as a cost efficient method of getting the meeting information out to more people.