Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Letter to AG's Office about Postings of Open Meetings

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Attorney General's Division of Open Government
One Ashburton Place, 18th Floor, Boston, MA 02108 

(617) 963-2540 
openmeeting@state.ma.us.

Dear Open Meeting Law at Attorney General's Office:

I do not want to file an Open Meeting Law complaint without asking you an opinion:
Can City Hall "flip flop" and allegedly post an open meeting announcement in one area
(the clerk's office) one month, and online another month?  This kind of "try to find the meeting if you can" approach, if it is intentional, indicates city hall is attempting to keep the public out.

Keep in mind, I have found the city out of compliance with the Chapter 74 Board and with the Disability commission.

For a few months now the Cable Advisory Commission has posted on the city website.

I could not find their postings in the city clerk's office previously, but found that they upload about two days before the scheduled meeting onto a city website calendar.

There has nothing been posted all month on the city calendar, even though they announced the August 23 date at the July meeting which was at city hall.  The next meeting this Thursday is at the high school
http://www.medfordma.org/mayor/city-events/


Residents have been looking at the city website, where previous meetings were posted, and nothing has been posted as of 7:23 pm August 21, 2018, two days before the meeting.
I did find the meeting posted at the clerk's office today (see image attached)

The Clerk's office informed me that Allison Goldsberry handles the postings.

ANOTHER QUESTION:
Why does the calendar say "you do not have permission to view them" ? 

cityofmedford@medford.k12.ma.us
Events from one or more calendars could not be shown here because you do not have the permission to view them.
____________________________________________________________________________

This is absurd IF the city is going to flip flop and use the website to post and then the clerk's office - citizens have ZERO idea of where to find open meetings when stunts like this are allegedly pulled!

Shouldn't there be some kind of continuity, familiar territory for citizens? Or if city hall is hiding something (like spending $200,000.00 of cable TV monies to pay teachers, including Ms. Goldsberry who is compensated FROM the Cable TV franchise fee monies, according to an answer to a public records request) maybe they have a reason to hope that the public won't become aware of an upcoming meeting???

The law reads:
 Post Notice means to place a written announcement of a meeting on a bulletin board, electronic display, website, or in a loose-leaf binder in a manner conspicuously visible to the public, including persons with disabilities, at all hours, in accordance with 940 CMR 29.03. https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/09/25/New%20OML%20Regulations%20%28Clean%20version%29.pdf
 

I personally like Allison Goldsberry, however, city hall dictates and employees do what they are told ...or else.

Take the city solicitor, just one glaring example.  Speaks with forked tongue and says he is a champion of free speech to a retired judge, then he goes about interpreting a rule concerning the library in a manner which, I believe, is not in line with the spirit of the rule.   Solicitor Rumley does this quite frequently, and gets bent out of shape if anyone doesn't shut up and be respectful to him, no matter how disrespectful he gets on a witness stand or - oh - giving legal advice to an attorney in a case that Mr. Rumley was a witness in - which actually hurt the individual - me - who issued a subpoena to Mr. Rumley.  I HAD THE JUDGE KNOCK THE OPPOSING COUNSEL OFF OF A CASE, THE JUDGE WAS FURIOUS WITH THE TV3 ATTORNEY SAYING "YOU KNEW YOU WERE CONFLICTED WHEN YOU TOOK THESE CASES."   Mr. Rumley, my witness, gave legal advice IN FRONT OF ME, to his late brother's best friend, opposing council, who took the advice and got back on the case.

It was disgusting.  It was pure abuse.  You've seen Mr. Rumley's invective in response to my complaints on his behavior, which I believe is unethical.  Rumley is a broken record and his defenses sound like Donald Trump on a bender.

The city of Medford does not play by the rules. 

People are posting on a political Facebook page I edit that the city is "smooth" or that the city isn't posting all the meetings on the electronic calendar.

So the question: Can a city put a posting in one place one month, then do a switcheroo and post it elsewhere to confuse the public

I look forward to your opinion and response.

Thank you.



Joe Viglione 


7:44 pm


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