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Open Meetings

  1. The Facts
Office of the City Manager

City Hall

144 Tichenor Ave, Suite 1

David D. Dorton

David D. Dorton

Director of Public Affairs

City of Auburn open meetings, minutes procedures

The City of Auburn is committed to the principals and practice of open meetings and transparency of information.

According to the Alabama Open Meetings Act, “a governmental body shall maintain accurate records of its meetings, excluding executive sessions, setting forth the date, time, place and members present or absent, and action taken at each meeting.” Open meetings, outside of the regular Council meetings prescribed by law, are defined as including both a quorum and deliberation by the governing body.

The City of Auburn meets and exceeds those legal requirements for regular City Council meetings. As mentioned above, minutes are kept to record the “date, time, place and members present or absent, and action taken at each meeting.” According to the Alabama League of Municipalities manual for City Clerks, “the minutes of the council need not, and should not, include verbatim reports of the discussion and comments which take place at the meeting, unless a councilmember specifically requests that his or her remarks be included as presented in detail."

Nevertheless, the Auburn City Council has long had a value to present more information to the public than just what is legally required. City Council minutes include summaries of discussion, both in regards to the Citizens’ Communications portion of the agenda and to Council discussion, even though minutes are, legally, simply a record of Council actions taken at a meeting. While audio of the Council meeting is not required to be recorded, or retained beyond its use to create the written minutes, an audio file is regularly posted online with all of the agenda materials.

Recent discussion at Council, as well as on social media, has focused on the joint information session held by City staff in November 2017 for the City Council and Planning Commission to receive information on the status of the Comp Plan 2030 update and the Northwest Auburn Neighborhood Plan. Written minutes were taken for that meeting and have been provided as requested by the public. Those minutes did not include a summary of the presentation or discussion, in keeping with legal requirements above, and since the meeting was an informational presentation by the City staff rather than a meeting with deliberation by the Council or Planning Commission.

Minutes for information sessions have not historically been posted along with regular Council meetings on the website, since they are typically characterized by presentations to the Council with no deliberation by the Council. In response to public interest in this case, we have posted those minutes, as well as audio of the meeting, in the City Council Agenda section of the website.

In that audio, City officials brought up the topic and suggested reconsideration by Planning Commission as a way to make the discussion public early in the process. This was explicit in the discussion by Councilperson Tommy Dawson, Planning Commissioner Sarah Brown and City Manager Jim Buston.

Beginning with the discussion in November, leading up to the Planning Commission's February 2018 meeting and with almost six weeks to go until the Council considers the Planning Commission’s recommendation in March, the process of reconsidering the height limit has been a public process.

“Just as residents have complained about the possibility of raising the height limit, there have been many citizens who have complained that they were not aware that the City Council had passed an ordinance limiting the height to 65 feet,” City Manager Buston said. “They had assumed that since the Planning Commission recommended 75 feet and the staff recommended 75 feet, that the Council would also do so. When they found out what had happened, they wanted to have this issue revisited. It is only fair that this issue be revisited in the public so that all parties can once again make their viewpoint known. By keeping this discussion in the public, we are making sure that everyone who wants to weigh in on the issue has an opportunity to do so.”

The meeting dates and public hearings have all been readily available, with ample time and opportunity to left communicate to the Council before they consider the Planning Commission’s recommendation on March 20.