In the past four months, the Menlo Park City Council has voted to privatize the city’s $6.8 million aquatics center, seek bids to operate its child care programs, and put two measures on the November ballot.
Yet, there is currently no official written record of which council members voted for or against these and other actions. Recent council decisions are documented only through archived videos and “Webcasts” — online broadcasts — because the city clerk has fallen behind on producing written minutes of council meetings, which traditionally have been accessible online and in City Hall.
The four-month backlog of minutes has sparked a debate that, for the most part, has taken place through letters to the editor in the Almanac.
Resident Nancy Borgeson accused the city of “malpractice” for its backlog of minutes in a July 26 letter to the Almanac.
Ms. Borgeson said the city is, in effect, violating its only policy of making minutes available to the public, and the backlog is restricting the public’s ability to access public information.
City Manager David Boesch and council members Nicholas Jellins, Mickie Winkler and Lee Duboc have dismissed Ms. Borgeson’s claims, arguing that the city clerk, Silvia Vonderlinden, is overburdened with other tasks, and videotapes and Webcasts of the meetings are made immediately available to the public.
Mr. Boesch replied to Ms. Borgeson’s letter with a letter of his own, saying there has been no direction given to Ms. Vonderlinden to stop producing minutes — she is simply a “one-person” office with a heavy workload.
Minutes have traditionally gone to the council for approval several weeks after the original meeting date, but Ms. Winkler said written minutes are a “very sketchy” record of council decisions compared to videotapes and online Webcasts.
“This is the most open council that has ever existed,” Ms. Winkler said. “With all of the technology at our citizens’ disposal, they know what decisions the council is making.”
Written records
But videotapes and Webcasts don’t replace minutes as an official record of council decisions, said Terry Francke, a general counsel for CalAware, a state group that advocates open government.“Minutes are a legal record of the actions taken by the council,” Mr. Francke said. “Telling the public to go elsewhere for records is the equivalent of saying … ‘just go to the meeting and sit through it.’ I’m surprised the council itself is putting up with this.”
Ms. Borgeson, in a second letter e-mailed to the City Council, said written minutes are also a much more convenient record to navigate, particularly if the issue of interest is discussed over a series of council meetings.
“I know from experience that if a city resident wants to refer to a council decision … the resident may have to scan 30 to 36 hours of bad videotape to find the item of interest versus spending 15 to 20 minutes scanning the written minutes,” she said in the e-mail.
Councilwoman Kelly Fergusson said the minutes backlog is “clearly a problem that needs to be addressed,” and noted the best solution may be temporarily hiring additional staff to help Ms. Vonderlinden catch up.
Ms. Vonderlinden said she’s trying to get minutes completed and posted on the city’s Web site to the best of her ability.
The April 4 council minutes went before the council at its August 1 meeting, but several changes were made by council members, meaning they could not be approved until a later meeting. The last posted minutes are from the March 28 meeting.
