Hi all Advisory committee members,

For some reason we were not on distribution for the email for Open Meeting Law and Conflict of Interest Law documents when they were sent in March.  Please take some time to fill out this paper work and send the required forms to the Town Clerk. I will followup at the July 12th 2017 committee meeting as an additional reminder.

Wil

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Curtis <emd@templeton1.org>
Date: Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 9:29 AM
Subject: Conflict of Interest / Open Meeting Law 2017
To: templetonadvisoryboard@gmail.com
Cc: "townclerk templeton1.org" <townclerk@templeton1.org>

It appears that I left your Board off the mailing list when I sent out the 2017 Open Meeting Law and Conflict of Interest Law materials in mid-March. Please read Attachment #1, which gives instructions of how to complete this process.

Please have all Advisory Board Members send in the acknowledgement form (COI) and certificate of receipt form (OML) to the Town Clerk no later than July 10, 2017.

If you have questions concerning this process, feel free to call me.

Richard Curtis, EMD
1 Elm Street
Baldwinville, MA 01436
(978) 580-6620

Rich Curtis was designated/volunteered to be  the Town liaison for this (these) items.

posted by Jeff Bennett

Pound this - as an FYI:

According to the general by-laws of Templeton/ capital planning/improvement:

Article XLII - Capital Planning By-Law:

Section 2: Committe duties:
To facilitate the reasonable acquisition and replacement of capital items (defined as assets and projects with a useful life of five years and a cost of MORE than $10,000.00.)

So, if say the board of selectmen vote to allow highway to spend up to $10,000.00 for say a snow plow, does that need to go before capital planning? Now, if the amount spent on a snow plow ends up at say $8,500.00, was this by-law violated? I think not!

Interesting to read further on;

It is the intent of this by-law that all capital improvements requested by a town department or board should be considered in the committee's report before presentation to the Town for appropriation. That would be Town Meeting, so what if a purchase does not go before Town Meeting? Does that item still need to go before capital planning? Since the language is should rather than must or shall, it indicates that it is not a must requirement, more like a recommendation, in my opinion.



posted by Jeff bennett

RE: is this a violation of open meeting law

MK

Maher, Kaitlin (AGO) <kaitlin.maher@state.ma.us>

 

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Fri 6/23, 9:33 AM

You

You forwarded this message on 6/23/2017 9:31 PM

Good morning Mr. Bennett,

Thank you for your email.

Our office is not able to say whether or not a violation has occurred unless an Open Meeting Law complaint has first been filed with the public body. However, I am happy to answer any questions you have about the Open Meeting Law. Which aspect of the posting requirements do you think the Templeton Board of Selectmen violated?

Sincerely,
Kadie

Kaitlin Maher

Paralegal, Division of Open Government

Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General

One Ashburton Place, 20^th Floor

Boston, MA 02108

Ph: (617) 963-2451

Fax: (617) 727-5785

Kaitlin.Maher@State.MA.US

From: jeff bennett [mailto:j_bennett506@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2017 8:30 PM
To: OpenMeeting (AGO) <OpenMeeting@MassMail.State.MA.US>
Subject: is this a violation of open meeting law

attached screen shot of the TBA agenda item

 

|

Fri 6/23, 9:33 AM

Good morning Mr. Bennett,

Thank you for your email.

Our office is not able to say whether or not a violation has occurred unless an Open Meeting Law complaint has first been filed with the public body. However, I am happy to answer any questions you have about the Open Meeting Law. Which aspect of the posting requirements do you think the Templeton Board of Selectmen violated?

Sincerely,
Kadie

Kaitlin Maher

Paralegal, Division of Open Government

Apparently, someone in the selectmen's office considered it a possible violation so they changed the meeting date to conform with the law, selectmen, you are welcome.

Templeton selectmen should be thanking concerned Templeton resident Jeff Bennett for helping the selectmen avoid an open meeting law violation - failure to follow open meeting law guidelines with regards to how to properly post a public meeting.



posted by Jeff Bennett

The blue bird is out and about, and it said a treasurer/collector could be headed to Templeton, with a paper trail of experience and certification. Also, piles of paper work that is NOT needed in Templeton.
Resignations, asked for and volunteered, questions and clouds following, along with a sigh from DOR, "oh no" and the merry go round goes round and round. Next up - OMLV paperwork.

Templeton could possibly soon have a new "first family", we shall see.


So, with the 38 hour work hours in Town Hall that is suppose to be in effect, does that mean people only get 38 hours vacation time?  Perhaps Templetn should just go back to Town Hall open five days per week, Monday to Friday and have 8 hour days, eliminating these hourly problems.



posted by Jeff Bennett

Selectmen finally ad "public comment" item to agenda, per their own policies and procedures. To bad it was done to an agenda that was posted finally at 10:23 P.M. Thursday evening, past the 48 minimum requirement per the Open Meeting Law. The public comment item was added on Friday Morning at 11:36 A.M. So here is a pat on the back selectmen for a job well done . . .sort of!


from the AG's Open Meeting Law guide:

Meeting notices must be posted in a legible, easily understandable format; contain the date, time, and place of the meeting; and list all topics that the chair reasonably anticipates, 48 hours in advance, will be discussed at the meeting.  The list of topics must be sufficiently specific to reasonably inform the public of the issues to be discussed at the meeting.  Where there are no anticipated topics for discussion in open session other than the procedural requirements for convening an executive session, the public body should list “open session” as a topic, in addition to the executive session, so the public is aware that it has the opportunity to attend and learn the basis for the executive session. 


The finally posted agenda has items 1, 2, 3, 4a thru 4q, then 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 adjourn. The Town Administrator weekly report posted earlier in the day has references to those 4a - 4q items, indicating some knowledge of what was going to be included at the next open meeting of selectmen on June 26, 2017. So, why was the meeting not posted until Thursday evening past the 48 hour rule? Is this another case of selectmen snubbing rules, procedures and the law? Is this an open meeting law violation. Could that be a $1,000.00 fine? We shall see.


posted by Jeff Bennett

One task of the Advisory Committee, discussed and voted on by all members.
In my opinion, which I believe I am still entitled to have, is this is another example of interference by the office of the Board of Selectmen and is one reason I believe, the jabs will continue, from this individual anyway. Don't like me, don't like being written about and on and on, fine, but a report of a Committee that involves the accounting of public, taxpayer monies needs to be reported as submitted, as it was written and completed, in my opinion. If the original report had been included in the fiscal year 2016 annual town report that was handed out at the May 2017 elections, this would not even be mentioned here today and beyond.

Carter,

At the Advisory Committee meeting on June 21, 2017 a review of the FY16 issued Advisory Committee's annual report compared to your edited version was done,  The conclusion of the committee was that the submitted report be the one that is issued and not your edited version.  As the committee's report is a public document it is not subject to be edited by anyone other than the public body from which it is being issued.  In addition, the edited version does not include the transfers brought before the committee which were reviewed/discussed and were not approved.  Excluding them from the report would be in violation of the Town By-law Article IV  SEC 6.

Again, the attachment is the Advisory Committee  FY16 annual report being resubmitted to be included in the revised Town annual report.

Wilfred Spring

Advisory Committee Chairman

posted by Jeff Bennett