Matt Ready (2019): I, I believe what we say in these meetings is important. The meetings that I recorded, you were, we were not recording them.
Consultant K paid by M: So now we are.
Matt Ready (2019): So it was the only way. And there were very huge conflicts during those meetings over that issue. So I just think we should clarify if that situation ever happens again. Let’s not have that happen. Let’s know what is going to happen. It’s either in order or it’s out of order.
Commissioner D: But you also, if I may say so, You said earlier on, whether it was in order or out of order, you were going to ignore the order-
Matt Ready (2019): Right. Because it’s in order. It is in order. You cannot tell someone to turn something off.
CEO MG: I think you’re playing semantic games.
Commissioner K: Could I ask a question Matt? So what, what would you recommend be written in here to clarify that going forward?
Matt Ready (2019): I just recommend that this board knows what it’s going to do with the situation happens again because it’s not, we made a mistake, we might’ve violated a statute [inaudible 04:50:05] by trying to tell someone to turn off the recorder that I think that might’ve been a statute violation and we shouldn’t do that. We should know. Okay. We don’t like it if someone’s recording but can’t, I shouldn’t like harass them about it or it’s just like it’s either in order out of order.
Commissioner Buhler (Board Chair): But you could’ve made a copy of the, of the recording.
CEO MG: So so, so here, here’s the issue is this whole thing was instigated by showing up at a meeting and turning on your recorder.
Matt Ready (2019): What whole thing?
CEO MG: Whether we record the meetings or not because we weren’t, we did audio record them before that. And so we call council and say, what do we do here? It wasn’t really the will of the interest of the board to audio tape [inaudible 00:18:50]. We, that, that was not the norm with the work that we did when we contacted all the [inaudible 04:50:59] districts. But you said, I’m going to record them anyway and so and forced our hand. So then we put a policy together that said we would record and with legal council’s advice, here’s how you do that. So you can make sure that that audio record is a can that doesn’t face the scrutiny of, of some members of our community who from time to time look at the meta question of Alyssa about the authenticity of the recordings and, and here’s the process, here’s the mechanics, here is the machinery. And we’ll do that for regular meetings knowing that when three commissioners are meeting a legislator’s office, that’s a special meeting. And, and now we just do that.
CEO MG: What you’re talking about is when we have special meetings and sometimes those special meetings include other representatives of boards that don’t audio record their meetings. And sometimes those special meetings are, you know, in, in places where may or may not be conducive to recording. And, and I think you’re, you’re, you’re asking us to react to that when certainly, it’s my preference that we follow the policy which records regular meetings. We don’t, we don’t, and then therefore commissioners don’t, record on their own prior special meetings and we just avoid all of this. I think the question or the, the why of the road when you do this. I think this is actually what happened, is that we just decided not to meet. That you commissioner colleagues were so uncomfortable with that and probably had less to do with the issue or to do with maybe other stuff around the issue that we won’t meet them. And that just seems silly to me.
Matt Ready (2019): I don’t see how do you want them… I would not take a position that wields power if there’s people who are not accountable for what they say in the room and I do not feel, you know, talk about trust. You know what increases trust is having an account, but what people said because if you can’t, we have so much trouble trusting each other on a basic level. I think we trust each other to like remember accurately a three hour conversation. It’s insane. It’s like it’s completely absurd that this board could function without an accurate record of what we say. I mean I realized that after two months on the board, all I care about is that we have efficient meetings when we talk about something and we agree to it at the next meeting we remember we agreed to it and we don’t have to revisit the issue.
Matt Ready (2019): I mean that’s all recording does for him. I don’t know why we don’t record offsite meetings except for the ones that other people would want to. If it prevents us from meeting with legislators, that’s totally fine. We’re not going to, and that’s why, that’s why I never insisted that we record everything because then we wouldn’t be able to serve our community, wouldn’t be able to meet with some people.
Commissioner D: And that’s the case with the, when we were meeting with, with other organizations that don’t record theirs, are not comfortable with that. It’s the same thing.
Matt Ready (2019): And I never, I never insisted we record those. Some people might, but-
Consultant K paid by M: So I think we should move on from this issue. I don’t think, I think it’s the general opinion that there isn’t a need for a formal legal opinion. And as your governance consultant, my recommendation is don’t rule that out of order if it should come up because it would not be proper.
Consultant K paid by M: Should we take a 10 minute break and then come back? We do have time in the afternoon, so we’re off our agenda, but it’s okay. We’ll still get where we need to go.
