Meeting minutes

Nevada's has quite a bit to say about the keeping and providing of minutes that are both timely and complete.

The OML requires that written minutes be kept of each meeting of the public body, for both closed and open sessions. Written minutes must include the date, time, and place of the meeting, the members of the public body who were present, the substance of all matters proposed, discussed or decided, the substance of oral or written remarks made by a member of the public if he so requests, and any other information which a member of the public body requests to be included.

Written minutes, and any audio or tape recordings of an open meeting must be available for public inspection within 30 working days after adjournment
of the meeting. Minutes of public meetings must be retained
by the public body for at least five years. Upon request,
minutes of closed sessions must be provided to the person
to which the closed session pertained within 30 working days
of adjournment of the meeting. Minutes of closed sessions
are generally not public records.

This raises a few questions. In many of the meetings of the Clark County town advisory boards and community advisory committees. For example a recent 2-hour meeting in Laughlin resulted in of minutes while an hour and a half meeting of nearly the same length in other boards warrants only one sentence that there was a long discussion.

Another challenge is boards that don't meet more than once a month. It is likely that the minutes of a meeting won't be approved in the timeframe suggested. A few boards seem to post draft minutes to the but there are also those that have, sometimes long, gaps in the minutes being posted.

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