I have been trying to view the minutes of the Planning Board meetings from earlier this year. On January 14, at the Public Hearing on the Woodstock Commons Site Plan, I brought up the fact that the planning board had discussed and decided to hold a workshop on affordable housing in the Bearsville Corridor. When I said that, Shultis interrupted me and told me that I was mistaken. However, when I listened to the tape of the Jan. 7 meeting, I was in fact correct. On Jan. 14, Shultis told me and the room full of people that he was in some form correcting or amending the record of the Jan. 7 meeting, and that the planning board would not discuss affordable housing in the Bearsville corridor in a workshop in 2010.
That made me unhappy.
I was unhappy because of the contradiction that Shultis created that night. So, I listened to and copied the cassette tape and transcribed the dialog, and I also viewed and listened to my video of the public hearing, and transcribed that, and what I ended up with was lies and contradictions.
After that, I discovered that no minutes of any meetings of the Planning Board for any meeting held this year, and perhaps even more meetings than that, are available, and the law requires that they be available two weeks after a meeting, and one week after an executive session.
Since I am just a citizen, I appealed to Mr. Robert Freeman, Executive Director of the Committee on Open Government of New York State. He wrote this advisory opinion for me this morning, and sent copies to each member of the Woodstock Town Board, as well as to the secretary of the Planning Board.
Transparency of government is one of the foundations of democracy.
In the next post on this blog, I offer to those interested the transcript that I typed out, from the Jan. 7 Planning Board meeting, and the Jan. 14 Public Hearing. See for yourself if you trust the planning board after you read that.
Here is Mr. Robert Freeman's letter to me, dated today.
No comments:
Post a Comment