[Revised July 26 7:40am and 10:07 am]
Councilwoman Patricia Anderson marched out of the executive session at today’s special meeting. She took her seat, requested a roll call, then promptly announced that the Council had made a decision in the executive session! Here is how it went:
[Roll Call]
Chair: “Let it be noted that the council decided not to settle with Mr. Orgeron at this time.”
Town Attorney Brannan: “Just for clarity you’ve authorized me to continue negotiations to reach a settlement. So you’re not ruling out a settlement there just has not been a settlement at present.”
Chair: “Alright thank you. OK at this time we’ll adjourn.”
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Commentary:
- The council must not make decisions in executive sessions out of the public eye.
- A council member must not reveal discussions which took place in an executive session.
- The presiding officer of a council meeting ought not to adjourn the meeting before the agenda is finished.
- Today’s meeting was apparently illegal before it started. The Town Clerk posted public notices too late.
- The presiding officer adjourned the meeting without motion, on her own. Wasn’t this parliamentary infraction by former Mayor Lizarraga the reason the Town gave to reconvene the May 15 meeting?
(Orgeron v. Town of Quartzsite will go back to court for continued negotiations.)
Video much appreciated, contributed by Southwest Desert News / MPI, LLC (copyright)
RBmt
July 25, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Council chose not to act, presumably due to possible Open Meetings Law issues regarding the timing of public notice of this meeting. We don’t know for sure because everything was decided in Exectutive Session.
Problem is, you need 72-hours notice to ratifiy results of an illegal meeting, not the usual 24-hours. This puts Council between a rock and a hard place: It was impossible to correct the OML with 72-hours notice and still meet the Judge’s deadline of July 27. Perhaps Brannan is of the opinon that since the Council knew of the problem in advance of actually making a vote, instead tabling to 10:30am July 27, they could get around the problem using the 24-hour notice (table decision to special meeting) clock instead of the 72-hour (correct your mistake) clock.
I am no lawyer, but both sides should ask for another continuance and do the ratification with proper notice. Only thing worse than dragging this out a few more days would be to have it tossed on technicality.