Last week I wanted to know what happened at a previous Orange County Commissioner meeting. When I went to the county web-site to read the minutes, the most recent minutes available were from almost two months ago.
I understand that county staff people may be over-burdened and that budgetary concerns have resulted in less staff than we used to have. However, it is essential for effective governance that citizens have timely access to the minutes of meetings.
So I decided to find out how we stacked up. In order of timeliness, here are the winners (municipalities selected more or less randomly).
If we truly believe that citizen involvement is a high priority, our county officials should demand that we have access to the minutes within two weeks of a meeting.
A side note – when I casually googled Forsyth County, I came up with Forsyth County, Georgia and their last available minutes are from 6/10/2014.
| Buncombe County | 6/3/2014 |
| Dare County | 6/2/2014 |
| Wake County | 6/2/2014 |
| Carrboro Aldermen | 5/27/2014 |
| Watauga County | 5/20/2014 |
| Durham County | 5/12/2014 |
| Craven County | 4/19/2014 |
| Guilford County | 4/17/2014 |
| Cabarrus County | 4/15/2014 |
| Orange County | 4/15/2014 |
| Chatham County | 3/17/2014 |
| Chapel Hill | 1/27/2014 |
| Forsyth County | 12/16/2013 |
Issues:
Comments
A possible solution
Videos are easy to make available quickly, as are condensed, summary minutes which list items discussed, votes, and future scheduling of items. The summary minutes could include the times in the video that specific items are discussed for people who want to get more detail. This could enable a very quick turn-around.
Agenda linked
If you click on an agenda item below the videos today, it will jump to that section. Doesn't help for extremely huge discussions, but it sort-of offers what you're asking for.