BY LARRY SOBCZAK
EDITOR
The Romeo Village Trustee Bob Hart told the village council at its Aug. 21 meeting that he no longer wants the council’s meeting synopsis printed in The Record.
Hart said that he had recently asked the Michigan Municipal League for details about the publishing of public notices in order to fulfill a requirement of law.
“Our minutes do not have to be published in the paper. They just have to be available to anyone making a request for them,” he said.
“We’ve put $219 towards The Record and I don’t even see a purpose for it. It would save us $2,600 a year.”
Trustee Nathan Bartholomew supported a motion by Hart to only post the village meeting synopsis in a public place in the village.
“I’m going to make a motion that we publish our minutes in three locations in the village: the library, the rec. center and the village hall; and not pay the money to have it put in The Record Newspaper,” Hart said.
“Nobody reads The Romeo Record,” Hart said, misstating the name of The Record.
Village Trustee Christine Malzahn pointed out that video recordings of the village meetings are available on the Internet.
In June, the village council voted to pay The Mitt.TV $54,000 a year to record public meetings and to upload them onto the Internet.
Both Hart and Malzahn supported the appropriation.
It is the duty of Romeo Village Clerk Mike Lee to publish public notices and to make sure all postings comply with laws such as the Open Meetings Act.
“I want it to be published so the people that don’t attend the library or don’t attend the Rec. Center or don’t walk past the village hall are able to pick it up on the subscriptions,” Lee said.
Lee said it was the village’s longstanding policy to publish meeting minutes in The Romeo Observer.
“When the Observer went away we had to find another newspaper,” he said.
The Record was founded by mostly former staff of the Observer in 2015 to continue the 149 year tradition of community journalism after the former newspaper stopped publishing.
Trustee Matt Edwards said that he supported publishing minutes in the newspaper.
“We have to publish. That’s the law,” he said.
Trustee Meagan Poznanski said that she did not feel that Hart’s resolution to stop publishing in the newspaper should be made on short notice.
“I don’t think we should be making a vote on something we added to the agenda at the last minute,” she said.
Romeo Village President Tad Siglow agreed with Pozanski.
“There are people out there that would be possibly interested in making an opinion on it,” Siglow said. “It’s informed consent.”
Edwards and Trustee Zach Fowler made a motion to table the meeting synopsis issue until the village council’s regular meeting in September.
Hart then told Lee to not publish a lengthy meeting synopsis in the newspaper and to eliminate discussions.
“I don’t expect the minutes to be 12 pages in the paper,” he said.
Edwards told Hart that he was doing a disservice to village council members by eliminating discussions in meeting synopsis.
“You’re not benefiting yourself in this discussion because the public is not going to know your position on this,” Edwards said.
Siglow observed under Hart’s synopsis rules that the lengthy discussion the council had on publishing meeting minutes would not be recorded.
“So this discussion would not even show up in the paper,” Siglow said.
The Romeo Village Council’s next scheduled meeting is 7 p.m., Monday, Sept. 18 at the Romeo Community Center, 361 Morton Street.
