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

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October 14, 2002 Page 11 of 35 both of these commissions and the city council. They are all governed by the same rules. Third there can be no closed or executive session meeting for either of these commissions without the advanced approval of my office; in which case we will describe to you some limits and circumstances in which such a meeting can be held. Item four before a Public Meeting can be held by this commission, the commission must give notice of that meeting by posting an agenda giving notice of the date, hour, place, and the subj ect matter to be considered during the meeting. Notices for these meetings, as for all the others, are posted through the City Clerk's office at our official posting board which is located in the City Hall Annex. You may have been down there an seen that as you enter through the main door of the annex there is a glass cased board. If you look up there, there are a number of public notices up there. The agenda which is posted in addition to giving due notice must be sufficiently specific to give reasonable notice of the matters to be considered and discussed by the commission. What that means is if you look at your agenda that you have for today; the first item was to call the meeting to order; the second was to do the oath; the third was to elect officers; the fourth to discuss establishing a meeting date. The desire is to have the items enumerated in that fashion so that a person coming in off the street will have a reasonable understanding of what matter is being discussed by the commissions at that time. As an example, as a minimum a Building Standards Commission agenda posting will need to include as a minimum the address of the particular property that is being discussed for action by the commission as an individual agenda item. If a matter comes up during the course of a meeting which is not covered by one of the listed topics on the agenda, that is it is not associated with something that has been on the agenda for the commission to consider, then that matter cannot be deliberated or substantively discussed at the meeting. You can't discuss if someone pops up and says I want to talk about this address over here. If it is not on your agenda, it is not appropriate for discussion. A response to such matter if it comes up, must be limited to exclusively one of three ways. A statement of factual information: Sir, we haven't finished notice to that property so it is not on our agenda tonight. Or, a recitation of the existing policy: our policy is that we post these matters 72 hours in advance and have to have a minimum of ten days notice. So I am sorry that matter cannot be discussed this evening; as an example. Or third, a direction to place the matter on an agenda for a future meeting: I am sorry sir that is not on our agenda for this evening we will have to carry that over to our next month's meeting. That is the only way that you can respond to something that is not on your agenda. All the notices of a meeting must be posted at least seventy-two hours in advance of the scheduled time of the meeting; no exceptions. And we need that information, whoever is doing the posting of course, needs that even more in advance of that time to prepare the actual agenda and have it in form. It has to be advance planning. It can't be last minute; let's add this to the agenda. I cannot think of an instance again, there is a provision in the law for emergency postings but I did not put that in here because I cannot imagine a circumstance at this point where or any of these commissions would require emergency postings and meet the statutory standard for that. Each commission must