Charlotte cuts backlog of council meeting minutes
The city clerk’s office has blamed delays on staffing shortages, despite a $1.1M budget and nine staff.
The following article appeared in the December 9, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
City makes minute progress: Only 7 months behind, down from a backlog of 2 years
For the last year plus, we’ve been calling attention to the fact that the city of Charlotte has fallen woefully behind on producing minutes of City Council meetings.
Maybe most people don’t care, but these are the written records that residents depend on to learn how their elected officials are voting, and what they are discussing. For most of 2023 and 2024, the city clerk’s office has been between a year-and-a-half and two years behind in producing these minutes — the worst record among local governments in the region — despite a staff of nine and a budget of $1.1M. It had blamed the delays on staffing shortages, the city told us last year, and had hoped to catch up through the use of outside contractors.
The long delays don’t run afoul of state law, because the city does make videos of the meetings available online, though videos are much harder to search than written records.
But we’re happy to share some good news: The City Council tonight is expected to approve a batch of 51 meeting minutes spanning from April 2023 to April 2024. That would put the city a mere 7 months behind — far from an exemplary record, but a big step forward for government transparency and accountability. Let’s hope the city keeps at it and can close the gap even more.
By the way, this isn’t a question of the media wanting records to further our own interests. It’s a question of how local governments that operate with our tax money are conducting business: Do they do it openly and transparently? Or do they do it largely in secret with a cynical indifference toward the right of their residents to know what’s up? (Ditto for production of public records, which incidentally was a topic of discussion last week on WFAE’s “Charlotte Talks with Mike Collins.”)
Personally, we think it should be possible for one focused person using commercially available artificial intelligence tools to draft passable meeting minutes in a day or less. We might put that theory to the test in a future experiment. (Or develop a meeting minute creation service as a side hustle?) —Tony Mecia
Related Ledger articles:
“The city of Charlotte has not published minutes of City Council meetings for 17 months” (Aug. 18, 2023)
“City falls 2 years behind on council minutes” (June 24)
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman