A couple of Randall Town Board Supervisors received a lesson in the State Open Meetings Law by fellow Supervisor Ken Mangold at the Town Board meeting Thursday night.
A quorum of members went through the annual walk through of property around the town looking for property violations and areas of concern. However, the biggest concern was not the property; it was that supervisors were present without public notification at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting.
“Your assembly needed to be posted at least 24 hours in advance to the public,” said Mangold. “You cannot do this again-it is improper and incorrect.”
In a confusing statement, Supervisor Rose Nolan argued that because the walk through was mentioned at the last Town Board meeting that the intent was to allow the public reasonable opportunity to review what was going to be discussed at the open meeting.
“We talked about it ahead of time,” she said. “Everyone at the meeting wrote the dates down.”
Regardless of the discussion or the intent Chairperson Bob Stoll agreed with Mangold and told Nolan that the meeting should not have happened because it wasn’t posted ahead of time.
Nolan then retracted her statement, and said that board members just “happened to show up at the same place, so we decided to do the walk through.”
Later, Nolan pointed the finger at Town Clerk Phyllis Kaskin for failure to post the agenda in a timely manner, but Kaskin said she was notified too late to post anything.
After several outbursts by Nolan, Stoll reminded her to keep in mind that the State Open Meetings Act pertains to this type of meeting and not simply a committee meeting.
