City councilors met illegally Wednesday morning at a budget kickoff meeting that also included Bristol’s department heads and the city attorney.
At the 40-minute budget session, led by city Councilor Ken Cockayne in his role as acting mayor, the entire rest of the council also participated, even sitting in their customary spots in the council chambers on the first floor of City Hall.
The gathering was not posted by the city clerk’s office and no minutes were kept.
State law prohibits even a quorum of the council to meet to talk about public business without posting the session’s agenda at least 24 hours in advance. That was not done. See the whole story here.
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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
22 comments:
I'm surprised Katty was able to make this meeting. This is just some of her attendance records for boards shes on. She will be a one termer. Zoppo will have to find a new puppet...besides McCauley of course.
Forestville School Comm.--5 absences
Water Board - 5 absences
Retirement Board - Removed for absences
Real Estate Comm. - 3 absences
Bristol Comm. Org. - 5 absences "
Gee, could there be some aort of ulterior motive for Kate and some of the other dems sudden interest in attending this meeting...hmmmm????
PATHETIC
8:26
Yes, because that is the only wasy they they will have any idea of what Ken, "I got a secret", is up to.
Steve you should be ashamed of yourself. You certainly know what section 1-200 says with regard to the definition of a meeting. On top of that you write a piece full of opinion and conjecture with the intent to purposely mislead your readers. For exampleyour start "it appears" that's not fact that's not even what the guy from FOI said apparently to you. Later you talk about the "intent of the open meeting law" " by gathering without public notice, the council 'effectively' limited that". Now how in the world did you reach that conclusion when this was a department head meeting, you reported, called by the comptroller and the board of finance for purposes of telling department heads what they better do with their requests. The council had no role and was not there to conduct official business. Steve talk about stringing together a bunch of random thoughts that are totally unconnected for the obvious purpose of creating an issue which does not exist- as I said earlier, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Here we go!!!Good job Ken with your first order of (illegal) business. Kenny "Clueless in Seattle" Cockayne. If your in charge, your to blame for this one. No one else left to blame. It isn't easy is it Ken?
2:05 -- It would have been just a department head meeting had the City Council not been there. But because they were, it was a City Council meeting.
It's not even a close call under the law.
Good job Krawiecki, keeping the city council out of trouble - NOT!
Cockayne the know-it-all should have know this. Isn't he supposed to be a stickler for the rules? And we have this for an acting Mayor?
None of this would be happening if Ellen Zoppo had been elected Mayor!
Thanks ALOT Ward supporters for helping to move Bristol BACK-WARD!
Please run again, Ellen, please!
Bristol needs real leadership ASAP!
3:54 PM: The voters have already spoken...WE DON'T WANT ZOPPO (although I do believe she's the wizard behind the curtain manipulating the entire situation here).
I'd rather see an "illegal" meeting like this than scripts handed out secretly by the former Councilperson Zippo.
i don't see how steve has anything to do with this.
cockayne likes to point out what everybody is doing wrong but for one he does not have a perfect attendance record neither.
as for alterious motive...what was krawicki's motive for showing up and not advising cockayne? as I see it cockayne attended the FOI training and I hope (not sure) krawicki knows the FOI laws...and the council members and everyone else is at fault? talk about GOP fans in this blog not taking responsibility and blaming everyone else!
he is the one who is pathetic, abusive and lacks decorum. i hope he does not treat all woman in his life like he treated Kate at the city council meeting this week.
steve, let me get this straight... .so lets say our council members all got along, and they all came to my house for a holiday party... since they all were there together it becomes a council meeting and subject to all the rules that go with it>???
or not quite as extreme, the council members (who are also citizens and have every right to go to meetings) show up at a water board meeting. Since the council members are there, does it need to be reposted as a council meeting so the public are informed???
Get real, I know your trying to make sensational stories like you are a super sleuth reporter, but this one's pretty lame.
YOu dont even know what the script was about do you? But you still parrot the BS fed to you by KIng Arthur.
6:47 -- You could invite the council to your party (though I'm not sure why you'd want to do that) and they could all attend. But they could not discuss city business. That's what makes it a meeting.
Since there is nothing more fundamental to the city's business than its budget, the meeting on Wednesday was a classic case of a situation where councilors could not gather without public notice. That's why it was illegal.
Now obviously there was no great harm in this case. It's not like they all got together to plot how to get rid of Forestville or something. They just wanted to hear about the budget.
But the laws are there to protect us all and elected officials should obey them.
7:15PM: There was a script. That's not BS. It wasn't "fed" to us by anyone. Zoppo did it. She got caught. End of story.
Because there is no complaint on file from a citizen this will go no where. If someone else was the acting Mayor mad dog (Alexander Haig) would have got his co horts to file one.
December 17, 2010 3:54 PM:
Maybe if Ellen Zoppo wasn't such a conniving jerk she'd be Mayor. Oh but wait she wouldn't have run in the first place unless she was.
You and she loses anyway you look at it.
What is it called when no one can figure out what to do. Like in bristol there all lost. They give raises out. Let police work crazy overtime and now they play doumb we need money. Guess the tax payers wil get blasted again. It woulkd be nice if we had a news source that would report the abuse.
No, the "end of the story" is that the hearing officer from the FOI Commission ruled that NO FOI LAW WAS BROKEN. NO FOI LAW WAS BROKEN. NO FOI LAW WAS BROKEN. You got that? He also said that in his opinion it didn't look good, but that was a gratuitous little snark.
12:49 PM, Maybe no law was broken, broken broken, but her behavior was unethtical, unethical unethical, not to mention, sneaky, conniving and plain old smarmy. She was warned not to pull the same stunt again. END OF STORY.
C'mon dumb o crats you all know the foi laws don't play dumb now that you got caught.
Good work steve
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