Friday, April 3, 2009

More about the Sunshine Law

Added Later:  The VB played this Sunshine Law as close to the margin as possible with extreme minimal qualifications to meet the law. You used the law to manipulate the outcome of that meeting which was to exclude everyone but the ones chosen to be on your guest list......

I received a call from Trustee Sweet regarding me being upset with the VB over the informational meeting held on Tuesday.  Basically he said what do you expect since you have repeatedly bashed the VB.
He also called to let me know that he sent me a clarification [via email] of the Village version of the Sunshine law:

Jim;

The Open Meetings Law you are referring to that the Village of Alexandria Bay is governed by is Article 7 of The Public Officers Law known to many as the "Sunshine Law".

Below is a word for word quote of the village's copy of this law as pointed out by our village’s attorney who is a municipal attorney for how many numerous municipalities in this region.

"In order to assure that the public is aware of, and therefore able to attend an open meeting, the statue contains a notice requirement. For meetings planned at least one week in advance, notice must be given to the news media, and also to the public by means of posting in one or more designated locations at least 72 hours in advance of the meeting. For meetings scheduled less than one week in advance, notice must be given to the news media to the extent practicable and must be posted at a reasonable time prior to the meeting. The news media requirement does not contain a mandate to publish a paid legal notice, but merely requires that the media be contacted and advised of the upcoming event."

The above should clear up some of your questions.

I believe this is called a special or emergency meeting (called on 3/30/09 for 3/31/09) for the purpose of getting the facts out to the taxpayers so they can comment at the next village board meeting as the Stimulus/NYS Dot Tep grant is on our agenda.

Is our interpretation or our attorney’s interpretation of the above Open Meetings Law wrong?

If so please contact me immediately.

Thanx-brent

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