Mayor Rey opened the city’s strategic planning meeting last evening just after 5pm, only to be challenged from the audience by county board member and Preserve Our Neighborhoods founder Misty Haji-Sheikh. Haji-Sheikh raised a point of order about the legality of the meeting. The “retreat” meeting was billed as Committee of the Whole, which the online version of the Municipal Code says takes place on the second and fourth Mondays each month, and in council chambers. Coming on a Thursday and being held at NIU, last night’s meeting met neither requirement.
Or maybe it did. City attorney Dean Frieders — who by the way got to take off his lawyer hat last night and help develop public policy, while citizens in the audience had to wait four hours to speak — said the applicable ordinance has been changed and the city is complying with the new rule, but that it just hasn’t been posted to the city’s website yet.
Here’s what the Open Meetings Act says:
(5 ILCS 120/2.02) (from Ch. 102, par. 42.02)
Sec. 2.02. Public notice of all meetings, whether open or closed to the public, shall be given as follows:
(a) Every public body shall give public notice of the schedule of regular meetings at the beginning of each calendar or fiscal year and shall state the regular dates, times, and places of such meetings.
So even if the city is following changed meeting schedule rules — and I am by no means sure this is the case, until I can check a certified copy of the ordinance — it neglected to post the new ones in the Muni Code by the time the new fiscal year began July 1.
Once again, citizens are getting bad information despite good-faith attempts to look it up.
Anyway, the usual way to address a point of order is for the chair to make a ruling on whether a breach of the rules has occurred, and if so to resolve it.
Mayor Rey’s response to Misty Haji-Sheikh was to say, “Take it up with the Attorney General.”
In the excitement, the meeting proceeded without council’s having approved the agenda.
Newspaper coverage of the meeting is here.