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City Needs To Do A Better Job Posting Meeting Minutes In A More Timely Manner

Jamestown needs to do a better job of more quickly posting its meeting minutes on the city website.

It doesn’t appear minutes have been posted to the site since the council’s March series of committee meetings and the council’s voting session.

That is simply unacceptable.

A city that wants its citizens to be informed about the council’s actions and discussions should be able to turn the meeting minutes around fairly quickly, at least by the end of the month when the meetings happened. The town of Busti works to have draft minutes posted on the town website no more than two weeks after a meeting takes place. We’ll admit that Jamestown has many more meetings each month than Busti does, but Busti’s is an admirable goal that the city should adopt as well. Perhaps the county could be a model as well. Minutes of the Chautauqua County Legislature’s July 24 meeting have already been posted, as have transcripts of the legislature’s committee meetings earlier in the month.

If staff time is a problem, perhaps technology can help. Surely it wouldn’t cost much to purchase video equipment, hook up a microphone and record the meetings. The recording could then be uploaded to the city’s website so that people can view the meetings at their leisure. That way, the city isn’t rushing to provide transcripts of the meetings but the public can still have an idea what happened at a meeting if they wish to see for themselves.

City residents, for the taxes they pay, should expect better.

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