In general, the Village does an adequate job of informing residents of what generally is planned for discussion during these meetings. Where the Village falls short, however, is providing more timely detail of what was actually considered and discussed during Board of Trustees meetings after they have occurred. There is a simple way that the Village can remedy this without cost. As a matter of fact, it will save the Village time and money each month.
Each month, Trustees submit agenda topics and documents prior to a Village Board meeting to Village staff, based on their respective responsibilities (for a list of Trustee assignments, see Village Directory). Concurrently, the staff prepares ePackets based on this Trustee input and distributes those packets to Village Board members via email. These ePackets contain pertinent meeting information, including each Trustee’s reports, proposed resolutions and ordinances (included as hyperlinks to PDF document files) which they may review in order to prepare for the next meeting.
Shortly after those meetings occur, the ePackets are published on the Village’s FOIA site after some of the links to documents, including seemingly benign reports, are disabled and are not available for public viewing. The January 2012 ePacket, for example, excludes links to reports on Plan Commission and Zoning Board activities, as well as appointments to volunteer commissions, committees and boards. Proposed resolutions and ordinances also appear to be omitted from view.
It’s assumed that the staff member who originally populated and enabled the hyperlinks in the Trustees’ original ePackets had to go back and disable the links prior to posting on the FOIA site. This seems to be an unproductive exercise, since anyone who wishes to read these (and other) reports that don’t pertain to legal issues or personnel matters can simply file a FOIA request to obtain them, and that can only lead to further administrative burdens on our Village Hall staff.
The Observer believes that the more our Village officials strive to share information with its residents, the more likely residents are to take interest in matters that affect our Village and our way of life. In this spirit, we recommend that future public ePackets be posted as close to the original form as practical while recognizing that a few reports (legally related) must remain confidential.
– The Observer