Sigh. There is a huge problem with the way I do the “county week ahead“. I only include meetings available electronically on-line . . . but there is a whole other set of meetings that don’t show up unless you drive to the city-county building and look at the bulletin board.
I’m not talking about the illegal County Board Chairs meetings, I’m talking about meetings hidden in a different kind of way – literally and figuratively. To say these meetings are hidden isn’t entirely true. They are hidden in plain site right outside the county clerk’s office. But, behind locked doors over the weekend. Yeah. In order to know about ALL of the meetings in Dane County, you would have to be at the city county building Friday afternoon – or go back Monday morning after the building reopens to the public to find the full list of meetings going on during the week. I haven’t done that.
I happened to be in the City-County Building yesterday and I grabbed pictures of the additional meetings to show you what I am talking about.
FULL LIST OF COUNTY MEETINGS
6 MEETINGS THAT WEREN’T IN MY WEEKLY MEETING LIST
Dane County Housing Authority Finance Committee
Dane County Housing Authority
Public Finance Authority
Executive Committee of the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission
Annual Meeting of the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission
Wisconsin River Rail Transit Commission
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
Well, these are all committees that don’t have Dane County Staff to enter them into legistar. And the county board and county clerk’s office won’t do it.
Note: They do retype/reformat all the agendas every week to post in the hallway. Seems like those are screwy priorities.
WHAT DOES THE CITY DO?
At the City when this happens, the city has the “additional meetings” portion of the website and the city clerk makes their own weekly list of meetings that includes meetings in legistar and then they are added to the list of weekly meetings.
The city clerk has a “meeting disclaimer” that says “Committee meetings are added to this weekly meeting schedule once the agendas have been posted in compliance with the Open Meetings Law. Agendas must be officially posted in the City-County Building at least 24 hours in advance. If you plan to attend a meeting tomorrow but do not see the meeting listed on this schedule, please call the City Clerk’s Office at (608) 266-4601.”
The clerk’s list has its own list of city committees as well. Which is different than the list you see here. Which is the list you are directed to if you want to apply for city committees – i.e. some options will be missing.
The clerk’s agenda is not always without error – which is why you see me note “on clerk’s agenda, not in legistar” or “in legistar, not on clerk’s agenda” or “stuck in a loop” because there the agenda the clerk’s office tried to attach isn’t there. So yes, human error is involved.
I TRIED WITH THE COUNTY . . .
I did ask once. And then I dropped by and asked Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell to come in the hall and see the problems I see. That was last July? or September? I asked him to AT LEAST post the full list of the meetings on line, so that the public would know that they should drive to the city-county building to look at the agendas. They are already creating the list and posting it. I also asked him to consider posting it somewhere that it could be accessed over the weekend.
I believe it is misleading to just have the weekly meeting list on the clerk’s website without some sort of disclaimer noting that this is not a full list of meetings.
I also asked him to fix this – so that you don’t have to rock back an forth to read the agendas and I’d have some chance of taking a photo to share the agenda items with the rest of the public if the clerk’s office won’t do it.
So far, no luck.
