Memorandum

City of Lawrence

City Manager’s Office

TO:	Tom Markus, City Manager
FROM:	Brandon McGuire, Assistant to the City Manager
CC:	Diane Stoddard, Casey Toomay, Megan Gilliland, Kevin Powell, Kurt Henning, Diane Bucia, Sherri Riedemann
DATE:	April 13, 2016
RE:	Recommended change to City Commission meeting minutes

Background

The City Clerk is responsible for keeping a true record of the City Commission’s actions. Traditionally with the City of Lawrence, the Commission’s actions are recorded as minutes and the minutes are produced as verbatim transcriptions of the proceedings of Commission meetings. Once transcribed, the minutes are presented to the Commission for a vote to approve or amend the minutes. The City’s current practice for producing minutes is based on tradition and past policy direction from the Commission. The current practice is not based on a legal mandate. State statute provides broad discretion to the governing bodies of local governments in determining how, and in what format to produce the official record of actions.  

The minutes are produced with the intent of enhancing transparency, which is a priority for the City Manager’s Office. Significant staff resources in Communications and the City Clerk’s Office are dedicated to producing audio/video recordings of each Commission meeting as well as written transcriptions of each meeting. Minutes and audio/video recordings are archived on the City’s website (http://lawrenceks.org/agendas). Commission meetings are broadcast live on the City’s website (http://lawrenceks.org/stream) and are broadcast live and replayed on the WOW public access channel.

Arguably, the verbatim transcriptions currently produced create barriers to transparency. The verbatim format results in excessive, wordy and confusing transcriptions. Examination of the Commission’s actions requires one to read dozens of pages full of run on sentences, repetitive points, and in many cases irrelevant information. In the setting of a Commission meeting, robust discussion adds value to the decision making process, but recording these discussions verbatim detracts from the usefulness and value of the Commission’s official record of actions. Additionally verbatim minutes are not useful for tracking the development of an issue or for tracking follow up work. The Commission regularly communicates additional directions to staff and creates additional requirements for proposed actions. In verbatim minutes these critical points get buried in the text and the transcriptions. Furthermore the transcriptions are not available until two or three weeks after the actual meeting.

The operational cost of producing verbatim minutes is significant. By estimate, four hours of staff time is spent producing minutes for every one hour the Commission meets. The process includes transcribing the audio/video recording, searching for names of speakers, formatting and proof reading. For comparison, verbatim transcription services are offered in the private sector at a common rate of $60 per hour. These services do not include formatting, proofing, recording speakers’ names, or any other services to ensure the quality, accuracy and completeness of the record. Staff resources spent transcribing minutes could be better spent on other priorities.

Useful and effective minutes, based on best practices, are objective and action-oriented. They provide an official record of the governing body’s actions as opposed to a transcript of everything said by every person who spoke. When a broader representation of the discussion is desired, it should be recorded in a concise format that summarizes the points made for and against an action. The useful and most important piece of information to include in the official record is the action or decision made by the governing body.    

Proposed Alternative

Considering the emergence of technology solutions like the audio/video recordings of Commission meetings, verbatim minutes produce few benefits, if any. The City Clerk’s Office and Communications approached this issue to develop an alternative to the current practice that could be proposed for Commission consideration. A demonstration of this solution is accessible by following this hyperlink. The proposed approach merges materials that are already produced for Commission meetings. The result is an interactive webpage where all reports, actions and audio/video for a Commission meeting are accessible in a hybrid format. The meeting agenda and accompanying materials serve as the template. The audio/video recording is viewable in a responsive window. The Commission’s actions (motions and votes) are added to each agenda item and each item includes links that navigate the video to the specific point where discussion begins and where motions are made.

The proposed approach utilizes existing resources to create a product that rivals many systems offered in the private sector. The proposal is expected to free up some of staff capacity in the City Clerk’s Office by eliminating the labor required to transcribe meetings verbatim. Most importantly the proposed approach provides a useful, transparent and efficient record of the Commission’s actions compared to the verbatim transcription. In the proposed format citizens can review each decision in its full context on a single webpage.

Staff Recommendation

Staff recommends Commission approval of the proposed approach to preparing the record of City Commission meetings and direct staff to cease the practice of transcribing minutes verbatim. The recommendation complies with statutory requirements for keeping the record of City Commission actions (K.S.A. 13-518), as well as the Kansas Open Records Act (K.S.A. 45-215 et seq.) and Open Meetings Act (K.S.A. 75-4317 et seq.

Action

Provide direction to staff on the proposed changes to the format of City Commission meeting minutes.