HILLSDALE—The Borough Council on April 9 introduced, by a vote of 5-1, an ordinance that states meeting minutes from the Swimming Pool Commission “shall be adopted and filed with the borough clerk within a reasonable amount of time after the meeting.”
A public hearing on Ordinance 24-09 is set for May 7 at 7 p.m. at Borough Hall.
At the meeting, councilmembers John Ruocco, who opposed the ordinance, and Abby Lundy spent parts of a 15-minute discussion at odds over how best to get the pool commission—which oversees a million-dollar municipal utility—to make minutes available quicker.
Lundy alleged at the meeting that the ordinance change was brought about mostly due to two-term former mayor Ruocco’s frequent email requests for minutes.
Ruocco said the Recreation Committee does not always publish its meeting minutes promptly and said “it seems like we’re going in the wrong direction” with this change “if we want to encourage these different groups to actually produce their minutes.”
Near the discussion’s end, Lundy said the issue was that minutes “were not being posted soon enough for Councilman Ruocco.”
With the exchange throwing sparks, Mayor Michael Sheinfield offered, “Let’s try to keep it away from personal attacks.”
Lundy then said that the minutes were “not being approved quickly enough for a council person who is emailing, requesting them almost every other month.”
Ruocco has pressed for more transparency from the council over years as mayor and now a councilperson, often being the lone voice or vote to provide documents to the public in advance of a meeting where they will be discussed. Most members repeatedly say that they favor transparency too, and are being as transparent as possible under the state’s Open Public Records Act.
The ordinance change was initiated by the pool commission, partly to change their minutes’ reporting requirements, which required posting 10 days after the meeting, a deadline impossible to meet, officials said. We reached out to the Pool Commission for comment for this story but did not hear back by press time.
The original revision to borough code 71-3 read, “Appoint a Secretary, who need not be a member of the Commission; who shall among his or her duties keep minutes, which shall be filed with the Borough Clerk within a reasonable amount of time after Commission’s approval.”
Throughout the discussion, Lundy referred indirectly and then directly at least twice to Ruocco as being the councilperson mainly responsible for the ordinance change.
However, Ruocco said on April 9 that he’d had to wait two months to get Pool Commission meeting minutes, and said he would be happy with a revision that made them available in 35 days from the original meeting.
Lundy said the change was not being done to expedite the minutes but to address “certain people who request council minutes in an unreasonable period of time or badger commission members for minutes.” She said this ordinance change “will allow them to get them posted on a monthly basis as they have been. They just don’t want to get stuck to a very strict timetable.”
Lundy later told us, “Frankly, I don’t know what the former mayor’s obsession is with the pool minutes since there are no taxpayer dollars expended on the pool utility.”
She said, “Should a resolution be put forth holding the pool commission to a strict time frame to have their minutes posted, I will be voting no. I appreciate all of the time that the commissioners put in and trust that the minutes will be posted within a reasonable time frame just as the minutes from Mayor & Council meetings are.”
Administrator Michael Ghassali said between ordinance introduction and adoption they will have time to review and make corrections.
Sheinfield said any council member wanting to suggest modifications should provide them to Ghassali, who will forward them to the attorney.
Madaio said changes can be made in the introduced ordinance if considered de minimis, or lacking significance or importance.