Do I have to identify myself?

Rosaria Salerno
City Clerk
http://www.cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/cc_video_l...

Do I have to identify myself?

If you wish. If you may.

Rosaria Salerno, City Clerk, 149 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston
http://www.cityofboston.gov/government/

You may just want to adjust the mike, I think there might be a

Is it not on?

Is it on? It doesn't

At the base

So let me just start. To answer your second question first, yes, well, people should be able to find out anything, so yes I agree.

I would like to answer your first question a little with a little more elaboration.

yes

So I became the clerk in 1995 and I was elected in January. But

I wasn't sworn in until February and in that intervening it was

I think I was elected on the 28th of January and I was sworn in
the the 14th of February and within that short period of time a
gentleman from Cambridge got in touch with me to complain to me
about Boston City Council minutes. Now I wasn't even the clerk
yet.

I think I know who this is.

And that was the initial introduction I had and over the years
since 1995 he calls or emails on a regular basis and I have to
say and he has every right to do that. I just have to say to
you that he's the only one who does that. And to the best of my
recollection there is noone else who has complained about the
minutes. But since he has complained we have tried to help
him. He contacts the Secretary of State's office and tells them
a variety of things and so I have to talk to the Secretary of
State's office and they have assured me that certainly the
minutes have to be available but we don't have to rewrite
them. We don't have to reformat them. We don't have to
customize them to the person who's asking for them. Those are
almost exactly their words but not quite. But that's certainly
the import. Now then to speak directly to you. I say that
because that's really my experience. He is the person. He's a
gentleman from Cambridge. He's the person who leans on us all
the time. So now then to speak directly to the order. It states
we should go beyound the minimal standards and so I can point
out with great certainty that we've gone beyound the minimal
standards. From 1822 to the present there've always been paper
copies available to everybody. Since 1996 the meeting's
televised itself while it's going on so everybody's getting a
verbatim of everything while we can't publish verbatim because
of a law in 1947. The tapes of the meetings are also available
for review and duplication upon request so that goes beyond the
minimal standard. And then the tapes are archived so they are
in perpetuity available for review. The agenda of the meeting
is available online 24 hours before the meeting. So that's
another beyound the minimal standard approach. The minutes of
the meeting are available within 48 hours of the meeting
online. And of course paper copies are always available. Now
the gentleman who calls complains about the language however we
know the agenda and the minutes simply state the topic that we
discussed and the action taken following the presentation at
the meeting. The Order directs that a brief summary of each
topic be available. And that is preceisely what each agenda is
comprised of. There's no parlimentary language included in any
Docket on the Agenda. Even when we've told this gentleman this
and explained what everything means. He calls again with the
same questions. So I, Councilors, both and all who are in
attendance I don't think that there's anybody in this Chamber
people who work here, people who're elected to be here, people
who're here because we are their representatives who is more
committed to transparency in government than I am. And I'm
totally confident that we are transparent vis a vis the
Council's meetings and Minutes that's transparent as any city
or town in this Commonwealth. We do more than many by being
both televised and online. And we cetainly are in step with the
Legislature and what the Congress do. So beyond the minimal
standard we also post all roll call votes I'll leave this with
you. And we have also developed a glossary of terms of all the
language we use on our Agenda, for instance Docket Number. He
doesn't understand what Docket Number is even though we tell
him say each matter before the City Council is assigned a
number Docket Number for tracking purposes. He thinks it's some
kind of mysterious thing. Communication comes out of the
Mayor. He doesn't understand that so we defined those terms
which we think is very helpful. When I told him we would do
that he was delighted. He thought that would be a great help. A
hearing order directs that there be a comprehensible City
Council Minutes goes on to describe I haven't seen your
description Councilor but it actually describes what we do
now. A brief summary of each topic, and or all votes or formal
decisions made during the meeting. As the minutes are
maintained now there can never be any question of
interpretation or subjectivity. Having the Minutes rewritten
beyond being unnecessary also introduces the possibility of
inadvertent misrepresentation of what happened nor does it add
any clarity because the rewrite could quote of any
Councilors. Furthermore the Official Minutes will always be the
ones that were created at the meeting. These would be the only
documents admissable for instance for legal purposes. For
discovery. As the clerk of the Council and further as the City
Clerk I'm the person responsible to keep all municipal records
and in the case of the Council Meetings to create that
record. The official record of the Council proceedings can only
be obtained from the Clerk. Having a second set of Minutes
could introduce difficulty at some point. All of this by way of
saying I hope by way of assuring the Council and the public
that the City Clerks office does take clarity and transparency
very seriously. I appreciate being able to describe the effort
as we make ongoing efforts to accomplish this. And we have some
nascent ideas which we are working on and we'll be developing
in the new year. So that, I think that is what I feel is my
answer to the first question. If you want me to the resolution
at all, I would just say to that we certainly can put the
boards and commissions online. They are published in the City
Council rule book. But we certainly can put them online cause
be are the ones who create that one too since all the boards
and commissions come to the Clerk's office to be sworn in. So
that would be an easy thing to do given the cooperation with
the we always get from MIS. We'd be more than happy to put what
we keep in paper online. And we do post any and all notices
sent to us as we've been doing long before this extra special
concern about the open meeting law. And everybody gets one of
these when they get sworn in by me. It's called the
Commonwealth's Open Meeting Law on standards of conduct for
municipal employees. And in it it says that the filing and
posting of such meetings shall be the responsibility of the
officer calling such meeting. So when they bring them to us we
post them. If they don't bring them to us we have no notion
that there're no meetings. So I want to make that clear. And
the other part of that would be that the records of those
meetings are their responsibility. They are obliged by open
meeting law to let the clerk know that they're having a meeting
but the clerk is not the keeper of their minutes. So that would
have to be worked out with each individual board and commission
about how those minutes would get posted. The clerk is not
responsible for that. I think that speaks to what you asked
about and if you have questions, I'd be more than happy to
answer them.

I didn't mean to imply that unless people don't care or they look and decide it's not for them we haven't received complaints about the inability to And I think your point is well taken I wasn't saying that we should do what we're doing if nobody complains about it because we've done we've done I've tried to show we've done many improvements and we're explicating more and more as we go along. But I just want to clarify that. I'm not waiting for people to complain in order to And when I spoke to the resolution just does that answer

absolutely

and I do want to say that I do look to the Council to help and that's the published volumes of the minutes which are supposed to be annual reports by law the clerk is supposed to have those published. And we're running into a little problem that I think partly depends on money but partly a little bit of encouragement and so I will be coming back to you to ask for your assistance in helping to get that moving along because we're far in arears on the publication of those volumes.

Well absolutely and as I said from 200 to 2003 it was in the Council rules that dockets should be sent to the Clerk electronically. Were that to happen then the things we've been talking about would be very easily built upon. So that's fine.

One computer. And they said that their computers are far inferior to anything we have in my office. course ours aren't inferior. They've been renewed recently but so it's kind They really need help. And I need you to help me help them.

It will.

Thank you taking me out of order.

No

For the record

which includes the public bidding process
stenographic services the records is typed into the machine and then working with the clerks office to create the minutes. Unlike court proceedings which are done verbatim the Council contracts for what are called transactional minutes. Which records what happens to each document that comes before the Council. It does not record debate or other motions for public to make a statement. Stenographic services contract is for 3 years and the current contract will expire on June thirtieth two thousand and ten. The specifications for the contract state that the Council's looking for quote a highly skilled court stenographer to fulfill the Council's need for reporting preparing and indexing the minutes of regular sessions of the City Council meetings held on Wednesdays at 11:30am time subject to change. As well as the reporting, transcribing minutes from various City Council Committee public hearings as requested. Said preparation of Minutes shall be performs with the time limit by statute. All inclusive. And that's literally the text that goes out to bid on the contract. The value of the 3 years contract is $180,000 which is $60,000 per year. The contract covers all regular and special formal Council meetings no matter how many there are and how long they last. If there is a request for verbatim transcript or for covering City Council Committee hearings there is an additional cost. And the transcript cost is $7 per page which is a standard Court recording format. Within the minutes themselves, the Clerk talked about how it's formed and done. And that responsibility lies with the Clerk's office. So there's no City Council staff responsibility so far as the actual development of the Minutes themselves or the Agendas. But the staff both the Central staff and the Councilors' office staff are responsible for getting those documents to the Clerk's office as well as they're responsible for putting together what's called the packet which is the folder of documents for the Council to review that's set up on Tuesday afternoons and then distributed to the offices. The members of the central staff who're responsible for those things the City Messenger is responsible for putting together the packet. And the council's receptionist sends out via email to a list folks who want to get the agendas and the council committees notices and things like that. The agenda for the week as well as the schedule for committee hearings. And that's done electronically as well as some things are put in Councilors' boxes and transmitted to interested folks. And that list there's no there's no paid fee or membership to do that but it's done people will either contact me or contact the council and say I want to get your email beyond your blast email. And so we just add them to the list and it gets sent out. We send out approximately 300 emails every time we send out a blast email. When I first started as staff director we actually hard copy mailed, faxed these items out to interested individuals and in the increase in technology have looked to only do an electronic distribution at this point in addition to what's on the clerk's website. And the clerk's website and the council's website are interlinked with the minutes and the agendas and things like that. So going to one you can get to the other relatively easily. Other things that we do do to facilitate communication is that there's training for students who come in who are taking a government class. And they will get what I call government 101 which is how the City Council operates, how many Councilors there are, how many committees work, classes that come in range from middle school up to college and graduate level and they'll come in and want to understand the operations of how the Council works. And we will do a mock Council session where they'll work on drafting an order for a hearing. They'll have a mock hearing and role play the different responsible parties that will be involved in it. One of the most frequent topics is to do curfews for under the age of 17 and having that conversation. and having people play the roles of different people who will come to testify. And then we also have people who'll come in who either come to visit the city council or come for a tour of city hall that will come through city council and we'll have that conversation with them. That's some of the more informal kinds of things that we do do to make it more approachable to students and to members of the public. During my tenure I've done this sort of government 101 tour for a group of kindergardeners as well as a group of Chinese women mayors in the same month in the same week. So the diversity of the folks that come in sort of get that understanding informally is quite broad. We do broadcast online. We do webstream so that it's available to look at even a year later or two years later as well as the broadcasting on channel 51 from 10am to 5pm as this one is actually went off the air about 15 minutes ago. But you can watch it online live and then it will be rebroadcast later. One of the things that we have looked at in the past was to possibly maximize technology and look to do a citizen's seminar much like along the lines the state legislature does. And take advantage of technology and have that online. Instead of having sort of citizen seminar classes be able to have folks click it and do an on demand format. It's on the list of projects. But it's not something that we're actively doing right now. And I'll take any other questions that you may have.

sure

I can say yes to both of the questions within the limits of the statute. We are governed by Chapter 447 by the Acts of 1947 our actual content those kind of things.

That's right.

What happens is she's actively here doing the live recording. Then after that she has responsibilities for actually getting the materials prepared to go to the printing office and she does that with the Clerk's office. And then there is an indexing that is done at the end of the year so however many times government operations was mentioned or Councilor Ross or Councilor Yoon sponsored a docket and what those summary titles are have to be indexed.

If she was to do a verbatim transcript.

I'm not sure but it's less than a minute. Honestly it depends on how fast people talk I would think. But for the City Council the City Council meets on an average 500 hours a year of what would be transcription type time.

That doesn't include hearings themselves.

the Council meeting in session to vote on things.

yeah

So, you're talking a significant amount of money to do a verbatim transcript. We could do an information request for the stenographer to say okay do an estimate based on average speaking time she could probably say she gets 30 seconds a page 20 seconds a page and that's you know 3 pages a minute times you know

I will say that the stenographer contract represents the largest single item on our nonpersonnel budget. And our nonpersonnel budget is about $500,000 so it's a significant investment in what we do. So.

yes to both. And in response to the boards and commissions piece of it the clerk mentioned we do do the council does produce what's called the organization of city government which is a small pocket handbook of contact information and it does include boards and commissions

REQUEST

it is not currently done electonically

IT IS word processed.

but I will say that the compilation of that information including term limits and things like that is a significant amount of work to keep track of. Because you have people leaving and you may not find out that somebody has board service until the replacement is done so you don't know when they left and things like that. So that's something that out there it's finding the information and having whether it's the clerk's soffice or MIS or the Council or whomever else putting that together it is an investment in time to get that information together.

right

I'm not putting any sort of judgement on the value of it. I'm just saying that it is a labor intesive kind of thing because I don't even know if the thirty commissions that are listed here are all of them.

if this represents all of them.

yeah, so

The stenographer works from a transcription that should be public.

Deidre Cummings

http://www.cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/cc_video_l...

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