09/17/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 9/17/2002 contractors and attending educational conferences where contractors who deal with public agencies sponsor a reception, an open house or a meal. It was his opinion that generally, it's ethically improper to attend golf outings but it's not unethical to attend that type of an educational conference. 8) On September 12, he provided advice to the Mayor, to the Clerk of Council and Council member Gareau on issues related to records retention committees. 9) He has been working with the Director of Finance on reviewing the city's organizational structure to insure that all city offices and employment positions have been properly created by Council and in accordance with the requirements of the City Charter. Finance Director Copfer: 1) The August books have been closed and reconciled. Council will receive the reports later this week as she is waiting for the results of the appropriations process to be finalized tonight so that the changes can be made in the accounting system. President of Council O'Grady: 1) A meeting of the Committee-of-the-Whole was held on September 10. Present were the President of Council, all members of Council, the Clerk of Council, Mayor Musial, Law Director Dubelko, Safety Director Thomas, Human Resources Director Copeland. At issue was the question of whether it was necessary to continue tape recording all committee meetings and caucus meetings of Council. The Law Director made opening remarks reiterating his position that Council is required by law to have full and accurate minutes of all meetings. With the directive issued by the President requiring taping of all meetings, followed by written minutes, Council is now in compliance with the open meeting laws. The President of Council made commeerts to the effect that the action taken was done so that Council would immediately come into compliance with open meeting laws. Further, these actions were taken with the understanding that suggestions on alternatives were welcome and that ultimately it is the members of Council who must decide the course to be taken. He noted that the focus of Council's actions must be to protect the public trust by complying with all legal requirements for documenting meetings. Discussion follawed with Councilman Gareau questioning the interpretation of the Cardington case which was cited by the Law Director in his March 6 memo as the reason that changes needed to be made in recording minutes. The Cardington V'~llage ruling stated that tapes only were not adequate. The Law Director stated that tapes only are a risky business. Other recommendations followed. These suggested that first, a professional be present to take minutes at meetings; second, that re-writeable CD's be used in place of tapes so that more data could be stored on the individual CD and that the shelf life could be extended; third, that sound companies be comacted with the intent of having them convert current tapes to CD's. Comments followed suggesting that there is a requirement to keep tapes and other records forever. The problem of storage area was surfaced. Following some discussion, a suggestion was made by Councilman Gareau to keep taping all meetings and pass the committee chair's report by the Law Director. The Law Director stressed the need for neutrality and uniformity in all reports, stating that different committee chairs would report in different ways. Councilman Nashar made the suggestion that Council use the tapes only, this would provide for both neutrality and uniformity and that each committee chair would keep an index of the issues that were discussed on the tape. The members of 4