Approving minutes when not at meeting

[Guest Susie]

City council  member abstains from approving the minutes of the last meeting because he was not there.

He claims he was not there and will not be responsible for "approving" issues that he did not witness and cannot verify.

I say that attendance has nothing to do with it: The council minutes need to be filed as "approved " to be the official record of the meeting.

What does RONR say?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The minutes are a record of what was done at a meeting. Approving the minutes has to do with the accuracy of the record and not with the validity of the actions taken.

[Dan Honemann]

19 minutes ago, Guest Susie said:

City council  member abstains from approving the minutes of the last meeting because he was not there.

He claims he was not there and will not be responsible for "approving" issues that he did not witness and cannot verify.

I say that attendance has nothing to do with it: The council minutes need to be filed as "approved " to be the official record of the meeting.

What does RONR say?

RONR says that no vote is taken on approval of the minutes. Once all corrections (if any) have been made, the chair simply declares that the minutes are approved.

[Gary Novosielski]

On 9/17/2017 at 8:53 AM, Daniel H. Honemann said:

RONR says that no vote is taken on approval of the minutes. Once all corrections (if any) have been made, the chair simply declares that the minutes are approved.

Agreeing with Mr. Honemann, I would add that members do have the right to offer, and potentially vote on, corrections whether or not they were present at the meeting in question.

The classic example is where the minutes state that Mr. Adams made a motion, but Mr. Adams was not actually present.  Surely Mr. Adams would have the right to offer a correction.