Bunny Clover

Thursday night the Town Board voted on a change to their meeting procedures.  Instead of accepting the minutes from the previous month's meeting at the beginning of the next meeting, they will OK the minutes at the end of the present meeting.  That means at the end of each Town Board meeting, the clerk will read the minutes of what just happened, they will accept them, and then adjourn the meeting.  From what I can tell the reasoning for doing this is the minutes can be posted within a month of the meeting instead of having minutes posted that are already a month old.  I believe the impetus for doing this change now is the local paper wants to took at the meeting minutes and publish in the paper anything that might be of interest (or juicy) to their readers.  While Town Board Meetings are open to the public, the public cannot speak during the meetings unless they are on the agenda or are called on by a Board member.  Therefore the best I could do was make a thumbs-down gesture which, if noticed, the board ignored.  A motion to change the procedure passed.  The board asked the clerk to read the minutes of this meeting aloud.  Immediately the first issue I had w/ the change became apparent.  When I was clerk, I took notes in my own kind of shorthand.  I made sure a motion was written down and if it was passed or rejected but the rest of discussions were disjointed words  that I knew I could put a proper sentence around later.  Our clerk read back the minutes as best she could but what she said won't be precisely what is eventually posted.  Probably not a big deal but puts the clerk at a disadvantage and does take up meeting time.  Immediately after the reading of the minutes my next concern about this change became obvious.  The board accepted the minutes and adjourned. So that adjournment motion and it's disposition isn't in the minutes as read since it hasn't yet occurred.  Again, probably not a big deal unless someone realizes afterward there is something else that needs to be said/discussed/ or a member has an issue w/ the minutes as read.   Finally, I'm not wild about the idea of the paper printing something they read from the minutes of a meeting they didn't even bother to attend.  Why not have the clerk post the minutes after the meeting w/ a printed proviso at the end that they aren't final until accepted by the Board at the next meeting?  The minutes could be posted earlier but if the paper wants to write something they find in the minutes, they need to verify it w/ a board member before printing it.