[Lnc-business] Comments regarding draft minutes of July 3 meeting

Alicia Mattson alicia.mattson at lp.org
Tue Jul 31 04:28:57 EDT 2018


Here is my feedback regarding the draft July 3 minutes:

1)  The bylaws require roll-call voting on substantive motions, however it
leaves it to the LNC to decide what is or isn't substantive.  Footnote 7
reflects one person's belief that it was substantive, however the LNC did
not make such a determination.

2)  On page 10, in the "Adjournment" section, there is a statement that I
requested interested parties to stick around after the LNC meeting to
assist with the "auditing" of the Judicial Committee results.  It was
actually the initial tally of the Judicial Committee, not an audit of a
previously-completed tally.

3)  On RONR p. 468, lines 16-18, the rule of thumb for minutes is given as,
"In an ordinary society, the minutes should contain mainly a record of what
was done at the meeting, not what was said by the members."

The first draft of the minutes has a lot of content that is based on what
was said, rather than what was done collectively by the LNC as a whole.
The meeting's call-to-order doesn't appear until page 3 of the minutes, and
we end up with 3 different listings of agenda items along the way.  The
final 4 pages of the 15-page document contains things said by people who
are not on the LNC.

I realize that different Secretaries have different styles, however
including this degree of what was said can be quite problematic.  The
things said may or may not even be true, and the fact that it appears in
approved minutes may incorrectly give a statement credence.  Since it's not
a transcript, the summaries may or may not be fair representations of what
the person actually thinks they said.  One of the public comments was
particularly personal in nature about someone I'm not even familiar with.
Starting the trend of including anything that anyone says during public
comments then turns our minutes into a free speech forum for anyone who
wants their opinions posted on the LP website.  This makes our minutes
something other than simply a record of our collective actions as a board.

If people want to personally publish their notes about things that were
said in the meeting, they can do that, but they shouldn't be a part of the
official record of the board's proceedings.

-Alicia
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