Meetings

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Meetings

The City Council is required (under the Open Public Meetings Act) to do all of its business (with limited exceptions to be discussed later in this entry) in open, advertised meetings where any member of the public may attend. Members of the public can not even be required to identify themselves. They may come and go anonymously as they like. This holds true even for Council Committee meetings (where a quorum of Council Members is not present and no actions can be taken.) Note that although members of the public may attend and watch, they do not necessarily have the right to participate (asking questions or making statements) except during an announced Public Hearing.

While it is not required, the Normandy Park City Council has two mechanisms for our citizens to participate. Near the beginning of each meeting, we have a Citizen Comment period in which any member of the public who wishes to, may take the floor to speak about any topic they wish for up to three minutes. Secondly, for each item of business, after the staff presentation, members of the public are invited to speak to that topic. The request,that is made of the public, for this priviledge is that they fill out a small form with their name and topic and summary of the comment and give it to the City Clerk (generally sitting on the public's right closest to the public) before the start of the meeting. The City Clerk passes these forms on to the Mayor who uses them to call the appropriate person to speak. They then go back to the City Clerk who can use them to create the meeting minutes.

The exceptions to the Open Public Meetings Act , are limited to 1) discussions (with legal counsel) pending litigation in which the city is involved (because, otherwise, the other side could hear strategies to be employed by our attorneys); evaluation of personnel performance (to protect the privacy of the employee), matters involving the real estate transactions (when advance knowledge of the transaction could affect the price); to review negotiations about contracts (which might affect the cost of the contract); to evaluate the qualifications of a candidate for appointment to the Council; and to discuss charges against a councilmember or member of the staff. [Note: I have paraphrased and combined some of the reasons. Look at RCW 42.30.110(1) cited above for the legally correct definitions.]