[MassHistPres] What should go in minutes

[Dennis De Witt]

Jonathan

It is not uncommon for minutes written in the minimalist manner you  
describe and your experience suggests why they are done that way.   
However, we have been told (I believe by town counsel) that our  
minutes, although they can be succinct and focused, should give at  
least some brief flavor of the presentation and discussion, if any.   
One advantage of doing that may be that if it some issue comes to  
court and all you have is the record of the vote, then the other  
party's written notes of the hearing might be the only contemporaneous  
documents of its process -- and contemporaneous jottings, notes and  
documents sometimes carry more weight in court than retrospective  
verbal testimony.

We too have had one or two experiences with someone trolling our  
minutes fishing for their idea of something they deem irregular or  
controversial.  It's important to carefully draft and review minutes  
with the idea that someone with ill intent may read them someday.   
(And that is a good reason for not tape recording meetings where  
irrelevant or minority comments can be taken out of context and blown  
out of proportion.)

Re public comment, we have recently adopted a procedure used by other  
boards and commissions in town to set aside a brief period at the  
beginning of the meeting for anyone to make any comments they care to  
about any issue that they think might concern the Commission and its  
work.  Mostly it goes unused but occasionally there have been useful  
discussions.

Dennis De Witt
Brookline


On Oct 7, 2009, at 9:06 AM, Jonathan Feist wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Here's an follow-up to my previous thread about minutes being public  
> documents.
>
> Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised to be greeted at last  
> nights  HC meeting by a furious group of citizens. One of them had  
> decided to scour all of our minutes from the past three years, in  
> hopes of finding whether we had discussed an issue of concern to her  
> (out of our real jurisdiction). She picked up on some mentions  
> regarding an unrelated issue that we did talk about, took various  
> quotations from the minutes  out of context, and decided that a  
> conspiracy was afoot.
>
> As an example, there was a mention in the minutes that Chris Skelly,  
> on a visit a few months ago, suggested that we try to see whether we  
> can get the schools to include more curriculum related to Harvard's  
> history. This was seen by her as an attempt to brainwash the town's  
> children so that we could turn them against their parents, as part  
> of out master scheme to implement some nefarious agenda.
>
> Staggering!
>
> So, she got a mob together. There was a newspaper reporter and even  
> a few nuns. The topic she told the crowd we were going to discuss  
> wasn't actually on the agenda. In an attempt to diffuse the mob, I  
> gave them 15 minutes to voice their concerns, and then most of them  
> left, though the ringleader stuck around, and I eventually let her  
> bring up the issue that concerned her, after all our planned  
> business was done. Surprisingly, none of my fellow commissioners  
> seemed to want to join her in her crusade....
>
> Despite the pitchforks and torches, I found it to be a terrific  
> learning experience. Perhaps, I should have simply bored them with  
> the two hours of real business we needed to get through, and then  
> invited anyone still standing to talk at 10:00 PM, but I felt the  
> need to release the tension in the room.
>
> Anyhow, I've arrived at the following list of what I believe should  
> go into minutes, rather than the detailed, helpful, and pleasantly  
> readable documents that they had been previously. I would welcome  
> your feedback.
>
> 1. Record the results of votes taken, including any language arrived  
> at by the group for decisions, letters, etc.
> 2. Record what people agree to do for the next meeting.
> 3. That's it.
>
> Assume that anything else in there is designed to be taken out of  
> context and turned against you.
>
> Cynical? Paranoid? No, realistic.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --Jonathan
>
> ================================
> Jonathan Feist, Chair
> Harvard Historical Commission
> jfeist at charter.net • 978-772-4864
> Blog: Delights and Processes
> http://blogs.townonline.com/delight/
>
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