Can you please clarify a few details:
1) when agendas and supporting materials are supposed to be published ahead of Town and Village Planning Board and Board of Education meetings?
2) After meetings, when presentations displayed and discussed at such meetings are to be released to the public.
We see slippage here and would like to file a notification or “complaint” to ask local officials to clean things up, but we’d like to lean on the law or regulations on these points.
The New York State Open Meetings Law Sections 103 (e) is clear that any record subject to the Freedom of Information Law as well as any proposed resolution, law, rule, regulation, policy or any amendment thereto, that is scheduled to be the subject of discussion by a public body during an open meeting shall be made available, to the extent practicable at least twenty-four hours prior to the meeting during which the records will be discussed.
What should occur is whatever documents board members have received for the meeting in their board packet should be scanned and posted online for the public to see.
This language applies to all public bodies which includes a town board, planning board, school board etc. If the board members received a copy of the presentation in advance of the meeting then it should be posted online prior to the meeting. If a presentation was done at the meeting but was not provided to board members in advance then there should be no problem in obtaining a copy afterwards without a long delay. It should simply be provided upon request but a public body can ask that the request be made through the FOIL process.
