Weeks ago, when I first thought about this series, I visited the City of Whitewater website for the minutes of the PFC meetings. By its own standards, there should have been four meetings each year (and at least that many as a matter of good policy, apart from the law). When I checked the city webpage at that time, I saw that there were quite a few minutes missing. I wrote to a representative of the city, and asked for copies of minutes that were missing. Here’s what I wrote:
I hope that your week went well, and that the week ahead is equally good. My name is John Adams, and I am the author and publisher of FREE WHITEWATER, an independent, local website offering commentary on Whitewater, Wisconsin. My site is published at www.freewhitewater.com.
I am writing to see if you could please provide electronic copies to me of the minutes from Police and Fire Commission meetings for those sessions that are missing from the City of Whitewater website.
At the website for the Police and Fire commission minutes, http://www.ci.whitewater.wi.us/Your_Government/Minutes/
policefcminutes.html, several meetings are listed without an accompanying document. I am writing to see if you could send me copies of the minutes for those sessions.The dates listed on the website without attached minutes are 8/24/05, 2/03/06, 2/07/07, and 5/23/07.
One other question, if I may: Has there been no other meeting since May in 2007?
Electronic copies would be more fine; I do not need any particular certification.
Please reply to me, at your convenience, at adams@freewhitewater.com .
Best regards,
John Adams
I received a helpful reply from someone who was neither part of the PFC nor the police department. It’s telling that there were gaps in the dates with available minutes on the city website, dating back years, but no one from the PFC, including its secretary from that time, filled those gaps. The missing minutes represented a gap of about one-third of the statutorily-mandated number of meetings from 2005-2007. Some missing minutes were not posted until I wrote to the city, and someone not on the PFC had to collect the information that she could.
Here is a snapshot of the City of Whitewater website page, after I wrote to the city, and after other minutes were added, listing meeting dates, and availability of minutes for those meetings:
First, I well know that the copies on the web are not certified copies. It doesn’t matter: citizens should be able to see minutes of a public commission, on the web, without waiting years. It’s not as though city website doesn’t have other documents posted promptly. The minutes of the PFC are more important, I am quite sure, than any number of other papers, videos, and charts that are posted quickly. It should matter more than it has mattered, in any city.
Second, I have been in professional and civic meetings for my entire professional life — decades — and these are among the paltriest minutes that I have ever seen. Did no PFC member care to write thoroughly and carefully? Most of the minutes, as I’ll show, gloss over vital topics. The problem with most organizations is that minutes are too lengthy, too copious. It’s the opposite with these minutes — they offer too little.
They are revealing, nonetheless. I’ll offer more on that in my next posts. The PFC series will continue Monday, with an assessment of how well our town has been meeting the reasonable standards for a police commission and a citizen complaints process.