Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 13:27:43 -0400
From: Tom West
Subject: Sally Kost frequently sought to fiddle with meeting minutes.
Seems like Chatham Coalition member and Chatham County Commission chairman has a problem with what she says being put in the public record.
Sally Kost frequently sought to fiddle with meeting minutes.
You can read the entire article in Cary news at http://www.carynews.com/2010/06/19/18690/joint-committee-record-gets-a.html
Below are some pertinent points
“The minutes are the official documentation of meeting bodies,” said Cary Councilman Erv Portman, a committee member. “It’s important they reflect what was said and not what someone might have thought they said.”
Switching to verbatim minutes makes it nearly impossible to challenge accuracy. The change will bring a more accurate reflection of the meetings.
Since the committee began regularly meeting again a year ago, Kost has suggested comprehensive edits to the minutes for at least four meetings: June 1, 2009, Aug. 31, 2009, March 18, 2010 and April 15, 2010.
In December, the committee had an extensive discussion over the Aug. 31 minutes. Kost said she wanted to clarify several points of the conversation, leading Rowland to prepare a special set of verbatim minutes.
In the preliminary minutes for the August meeting, Kost is reported as saying that the county would work on design standards and an overlay district for the area after the land use plan is adopted. In the December review, Kost said, “I never said that. I didn’t say it’s after the land use is adopted because I think they need to be concurrent and it’s probably a point we need to discuss.”
But in Rowland’s verbatim minutes of the August meeting, Kost said: “One of the things that we were going to propose is perhaps we direct staff to start working – once we have a land use plan – to work on design standards and then have an overlay for this area.”
The comment stayed in the approved minutes.
After the April 15 meeting, Kost wanted to delete this from the preliminary minutes: “Kost said that she wanted to make a decision after absorbing the better information,” referring to new data on environmental impact of a proposed development near Jordan Lake. Kost says she’s concerned that the switch to verbatim minutes will create a larger workload for staff.