I wrote earlier this week about the agenda of a Whitewater Community Development Authority meeting. The agenda seemed oddly vague, and some portions of it were so obscure that it provided no reasonable information about a subject’s contents. See, Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 7-26-10.
The agenda’s not a minor task; it’s a public announcement, and should be the responsibility of the person who runs the organization. Public officials should review announcements themselves, as should citizen leaders of boards or commissions for their own areas of responsibility. In Whitewater, for the CDA, that leader would be Kevin Brunner, Whitewater’s city manager. (That’s so much for the idea of an independent CDA with only limited participation of current officeholders.)
When one sees a sketchy agenda, and mentions it, I’m sure some officials feel the criticism is an unfair burden, as though it’s an imposition on their (visionary) work. That’s not true, and it’s self-flattering of officials to see it that way.
A vague agenda keeps the public in the dark about a meeting, and serves only insiders who want to keep matters quiet, although they’re on public boards considering public matters under Wisconsin law.
Even if officials won’t produce clear agendas as the law requires, they can still make accurate and through recordings of the meetings they conduct. Minutes may be sketchy, too, but there’s a may around that deficiency.
We have a community television station, and it offers the best and most honest way to learn the contents of a meeting. In all Whitewater, no record is more honest and complete than the video recordings of Whitewater’s public meetings. In a town of dodgy officials, Whitewater Community Television stands out for its accuracy and true public spirit. They record some of Whitewater’s leading boards and commissions, as often as they can.
They can’t be everywhere at once, but for those times they can’t, there’s a solution:
That’s it. A simple camera from an American company, available for less than 200 dollars, would allow Whitewater’s boards and commissions to record meetings where Whitewater’s Community Television would not be present. These videos wouldn’t look as sharp, but they would be more accurate than any agenda anyone in the city has ever typed as a meeting’s summary. Words, pictures, tone, and atmosphere: the camera would show all that.
It wouldn’t be as sharp as a professionally recorded video, but it would be better than no video. For those concerned that the video wouldn’t look right, a small introduction could appear before each video posted on the Community Television website:
We’re foolish to make the better the enemy of the good.
A citizen has the right to record any public portion of a public meeting in this way, and I’m sure that will start happening soon enough. It would be responsible if Whitewater took this step on its own.
Whitewater’s politicians and city manager should support recording all meetings, as a commitment to a more open politics.