03-E Hist Pres.Comm. (10/14/02) - Laserfiche WebLink

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October 14, 2002 Page 10 of 35 chairman. Our usual custom is to try to contact the members to find a date and help the chairman select date and time that is available to the most people serving. Item number 8: Orientation of the Board and Commission members. A and B we have a couple of items that are important to all boards and commissions of the City of Paris. These today are specifically geared toward the two new commissions. Those members of the Main Street Advisory Board can profit from hearing from this discussion as well because all of these do apply to our boards and commissions. And I am going to ask the City Attorney to give out some information and discuss with you the Open Meetings Act and how it relates to your respective commission or board. Mr. Schenk: I am going to try to make this a little less formal and let you sit back in your chair a moment and relax and try to enjoy this as much as you can. I have handed out, first of all this is the Attorney General's Open Meetings Handbook, 90 pages long, anyone who wants to borrow that is entitled to do that. Then he also has a publication called The Open Meetings Act Made Easy which is 18 pages long, which I also have a copy of if you want that. I have tried to give you what I think you need to know in a single page. And so what I would like to do is go over that with you very quickly. So we are dealing with Exhibit No. 1: Basic Principles of the Open Meeting Act. That is the first one we are going to talk about right now. And I will try......... Multiple discussions about who needs which copies-ordinances etc. Shuffle ofpapers. Discussion about who has what papers. The Open Meetings Act, because these two boards are boards which have authority to make decisions regarding the issuance of different kinds of permits, they are boards or commissions that will be subject to the Open Meetings Act. What I am going to try to do is to kind of hit this kind of outline given to you and then hopefully at least familiarize yourself with why we do what we do and how it has to be done. I think you received in advance an agenda for this particular meeting. That is part of this whole issue of open meetings. That is part of the state requirements for this kind of ineeting. The door is still open down there; anybody can come through because this is a public meeting and so will all of your meetings. There will be no closed sessions for either of these commissions without the approval of my office. There is not a circumstance I can envision where it would be appropriate to do that. First of all if you have a meeting, as we all know, you must have a quorum for that meeting. Can everyone hear me down at the other end? And the quorum for each of these boards is four. So you must have four members in attendance. In lieu of regular meetings, alternates can serve and still establish a quorum. But when you have a meeting of a quorum of inembers that is a meeting for purposes of the Texas Open Meetings Act. That is a state statute adopted by the legislature applicable to