[alac] Open meetings

["John R Levine" <johnl@xxxxxxxx>]

I'm in favor of open meetings in general.  They make an organization's
process much more credible.

I happen to be the mayor of my tiny village in upstate NY, where both by
local policy and state law, all meetings are open.  A meeting is defined
as a quorum of the board dealing with municipal issues, so we are allowed
to speak to each other if we meet in the supermarket and to talk privately
on the phone to each other, but a meeting is a meeting and people can
come to listen.

Visitors are allowed to sit and listen to us talk, and can address the
meeting if invited by the chair.  Most of the time the crowd is small
enough that people just wave at me when they want to speak and I recognize
them.  When there's a big crowd for a contentious topic, we make them line
up and set a time limit of 3 to 5 minutes each.  It's important that the
speaking process be perceived as fair so I do enforce the time limit.

We have executive sessions for specific topics like hiring, firing, and
contract negotiations, but most meetings run two hours with no more than 5
or 10 minutes of exec at the end.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxx, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.