Minutes improperly amended

[hollasa]

I attend public board meetings of a local school board, and am one of the people who occasionally present to them during the public input time. Their custom is to record a summary of presenter comments in their minutes.

At their last board meeting (April 20th), one of the members brought forward a correction to the minutes of their previous meeting (April 6th), as they were about to approve those minutes. The correction changed the summary of a presenter's comments - as an example, let's say the presenter said that the board members, during their election, had agreed that the building should be painted blue, with paint from all areas. The amended minutes now state that the presenter said that during the election, he had said that the building should be painted blue, and added a note to say that all those elected thought it would be good if outlying paint stores were represented in some way. There was no discussion on this correction, and the minutes were passed as amended.

There's two issues - what was said during the previous meeting, and what was said during the election. I'm not going to speak to what was said during the election, but I can say that during the previous meeting, the presenter did not say what the minutes were amended to reflect him saying. The original draft was much more accurate. 

I had contacted the secretary to get a copy of the text of the changes, and was told that these changes made would be reflected in the April 20th minutes, and that those changes would be made public when the board meets to approve the April 20th minutes at the end of May. They have now posted the "approved" minutes of April 6th, and they have the original text in them, not the corrected version.

My question, then, is to the best approach to the board on this. I'm not sure if they're taking the position that amendments to minutes only take place once future minutes are approved, or if they're taking the position that the amendment to the April 6th minutes are null and void (and decided that outside of a meeting). I don't believe that they would have the power outside of a meeting to make that determination. I would have thought that they should have published the amended minutes, and then at an upcoming meeting, amend something previously adopted. Of course, on the other hand, having the incorrect information publicly available for the April 6th minutes is not ideal either. 

Would appreciate any input!

[Hieu H. Huynh]

See FAQ #15.

[Dan Honemann]

As far as the rules in RONR are concerned (putting aside the fact that these comments should not be included in the minutes in the first place), when corrections are made to the secretary's draft of the minutes of the preceding meeting at the time when they are pending for approval at the next meeting, these corrections should be incorporated directly into the minutes being approved, and are not reported in the minutes of the meeting at which the corrections were made.

Apparently, this was not what occurred, but the board may be operating under rules differing from the rules in RONR.

 

[Richard Brown]

The link shared by Mr. Huynh correctly reflects the position of RONR regarding comments of speakers in minutes, but I don't believe it fully answers Hollasa's question.  FAQ # 16, right below it, addresses the general method of correcting and approving minutes. http://www.robertsrules.com/faq.html#16

There are other issues involved here.  Regardless of whether comments should or should not be summarized in the minutes, a body may direct, by rule, motion or custom, that it be done.   This body apparently does it.  So, based on the two FAQ's, any "corrections" to the minutes of the previous meeting as to what "was said" should be incorporated into the minutes of that meeting... the meeting whose minutes are being corrected.  For some reason, that was not done.  We don't know why.

If the body (the school board) did approve that "correction" to the minutes, it should appear in the approved minutes which are being posted.  The omission may be an oversight or may be because someone... or perhaps all of the members... decided not to make the "correction" after all.  Regardless of why or how it happened, what happened is not correct per the rules in RONR.  (It is possible that the school board has some rule of its own that allow this, but I doubt it).  

I agree with Hollasa that, absent some special rule of order, neither the secretary (or clerk) nor the members of the school board have any authority outside of a meeting to direct that an approved "correction" be deleted from the approved minutes.

Since this is a body of which Hollasa is not a member, all he can do is ask questions, complain and speak out.  Only the members of the school board itself have any power to actually do anything else about it.

I think it's a good catch on the part of Hollasa and I think he has this right.