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

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October 14, 2002 Page 13 of 35 example and then you can spin from there. The case that happened, and I cannot recall the county, but it was a situation where, and this applies to the County Commissioners Court as well, but the County Commissioners Court was in attendance at a particular seminar sort of thing. They had different hotel rooms, as you would expect, and one commissioner was going from room to room discussing something with the commissioners about something they were going to meet on after their return from their seminar; and then finding the reaction on that particular issue and then goes to the other members and say so and so says, so and so says, so and so says. And obviously the intent of that action was to circumvent the purpose of the act which is to have those deliberations and discussions in the course of a public meeting. It is very difficult to give you a hard and fast rule beyond that. Can you have casual conversation or one classic example that I spoke of with the Attorney General about one time. Two council members saying, I hope you support me on that point. One council man and one council. That particular Attorney General felt that was okay. The A.G. has rendered an opinion recently that where we have a subcommittee of councilmen created where it consisted of a Mayor, and one council member on a subcommittee that was going to be primarily advisory that was too close because it was a five member council and obviously one more vote would be all that would be necessary to adopt whatever those two members came up with. So, that is part of it. There is no hard and fast rule. I think the best rule, especially for the Building and Standards Commission, because I make that distinction in the materials I give you under the conflicts of interest, is that the purpose of that board is enforcement as opposed to the, there are aspects of enforcement in the Historic Preservation but that is primarily designating areas as historic and considering regulations to apply. The job of the Building and Standards Commission is to order someone to do something with their property and if they fail to do that to meet out the various civil penalties or other actions. I think you should do your best. You can certainly go and look at the property on your own. Consider the staff reports and the information that is presented by the staff. But your action ought to be based on what you primarily hear at the meeting. I think that is the standard that you can follow on your deliberations on a code enforcement action like that you can never go wrong. And so I think that is the primary purpose of the act is to see that the essence of the deliberation that leads to a decision is done in a public forum. Any other questions? Well, we all understand the Open Meetings Act. It only took me about five years so you are actually way ahead of ine. If you have any other questions I certainly encourage you to contact us and discuss these questions and we will be in contact with both chairmen in regard to those kinds of issues. But I think the Open Meetings Act is a very important part of what you do. It is essential that you understand it and it is really not that complicated when you consider the basic principle.