Majority says video of Board minutes is sufficient record of what members say as ironically mikes fail to pick up members speaking during parts of meeting; efficiency wins out over “man hours” and producing more detailed paper record of Board minutes
The Governing Board’s long agenda and overworked administrative staff have caused the minutes of Board meetings to be shorter and more succinct than in the past. They no longer, for example, contain brief summaries of positions taken by Board members. This has been a concern of Representative Ray Sigafoos.
Ray Sigafoos
Representative Sigafoos urged the Board to adopt a policy that would require the minutes to contain in brief summary fashion relevant comments and positions taken by Board members during a Board meeting. He viewed a paper record as a more reliable historical record of various decisions made by the Governing Board.
Representative Chevalier agreed with Mr. Sigafoos regarding adding relevant comments and in addition argued he was concerned with equality as some Board member comments were included in the minutes but some of his comments were not. (See video tape link in re this discussion.)
A majority (Ms. McCasland, Mr. Padilla, Mr. Kuknyo) disagreed. Mr. Padilla argued that a video recording of the meeting was sufficient for historical purposes. When he weighed the number of hours it might take for an administrator to properly prepare minutes that included relevant summaries of positions taken by Board members against the availability of a video record, he came out on the side of the video record and administrative efficiency. His arguments carried the day.
On the question of treating comments of Board members equally, the majority decided to remove comments from a May 17 meeting made by Mr. Sigafoos rather than include the comments of Mr. Chevalier made at the same meeting.