by intrepid in Civic Action, Politics
Posted on May 28, 2012 at 9:52 pm
Last Modified on May 28, 2012 at 10:39 pm
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In my efforts to understand and follow the business of city government in Somerville, I have tried to view or download official minutes of official meetings of boards, departments, commissions and one Authority which are identified on the public minutes and meeting agendas page of the city website.
I have not been able to achieve this for a random sample of city meetings. The agendas are available for viewing and saving, but not, it seems, the minutes of past meetings. Before I pursue what appears to be an important discrepancy between what the site represents it provides access to, and what is actually available, I would appreciate the corroboration of savvy website users that the difficulties I’ve encountered are not attributable to my own limited skills. Any volunteers?
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Excellent observation! Using the default view showing the last 2 months of all city meetings shown as 3 pages with 30 or so meetings per page (90 meetings total), there only appears to be a handful of posted minutes.
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Only the blue minutes links seem to be working. Minutes of the Board of Alderman meetings are available here:
http://somervillecityma.iqm2.com/Citizens/Calendar.aspx
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Kent- Having undertaken a similar search in the past, I think the BOA meeting minutes have long been the exception.I know these (BOA) meetings are available to some residents on the city’s cable station…there are others that are video-recorded, e.g., the Housing Authority meetings, but in terms of public access to permanent meeting records across the board, I do not know that it exists. Would be an interesting question for the resistat blog, or for the Mayor himself, perhaps at the Ward 6 meeting 5/30.
I will see about posting my query to resistat blog now, and will post a link if/when it is published and/or a reply appears.
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I mis-spoke about the date of the Ward 6 resistat meeting, which is tonight. I am currently still out on a limb, and rather risk-averse, so I will not be the one.
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I went to the Ward 6 ResiStat meeting and spoke with Denise Taylor, ResiStat Coordinator (dtaylor@somervillema.gov). She was very receptive to feedback about opening up government data. I emailed her today about this particular concern and invited her to comment here.
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Kent, I appreciate that you acted so quickly on the information about missing minutes. Hopefully we will catch some flies, between the sweet email I sent to resistat in the afternoon of 5/29, and the presumably friendly discussion you had with Denise Taylor that evening. We have certainly learned by now that vinegar doesn’t help our fly-catching attempts a bit, unless it is followed by a RAID chaser.
Despite that, I am tempted to express my scepticism that the city administration will become more transparent in response to repeated public requests. I was dismayed-but not surprised-to discover that the resistat “blog” has changed dramatically; that questions and comments submitted on the site are apparently more carefully screened than in the past. I wrote twice last year, and my letters appeared immediately, even when the initial reply was that the moderator needed to look into the matter, and would get back to us readers of the blog. And that person was true to her word.The format of the site and the comments/questions section has completely changed. Conversely,there was a recent submission reported here, I believe, that has never appeared on the resistat blog. It raised questions about what may still become a PR nightmare for the administration. One wonders whether the city has stopped using interns in the moderator role, replacing them with risk management and/or damage control specialists!
I will continue to watch with interest.
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