A Problem That Needs Solving - Editorial
There is a serious problem at Mashpee Town Hall when it comes to meeting agendas, public communication and upkeep of the town’s website. And after last week’s Community Preservation Committee meeting, we know we are not the only ones who have noticed.
It has been a pervasive problem for several months now—we noticed over the summer that the online meeting calendar at the Town of Mashpee website did not quite match the meeting schedule we received each week from the town clerk’s office. There also seemed to be a problem finding meeting agendas online; webpages for certain committees and boards on the town’s website were outdated, lacking current board membership information and with recent meeting agendas being missing entirely from the online record, in some cases for months at a time.
Our reporters have made a point to visit town hall regularly to check the bulletin board for meeting agendas and hearing notices and were told by the town clerk that the inconsistencies were due to short staffing and workload from the election, both of which we can completely understand.
Committees, though, have taken notice. Their meetings are not being properly communicated to the public ahead of time, and public involvement and support suffers as a direct result of that. If the town’s reporters—whose job is, in large part, to cover town meetings—do not know that a meeting is happening, then how can the average citizen be expected to know?
This conundrum was the topic of a discussion at last Thursday’s CPC meeting; several good points were made, as was an innovative suggestion to mend the issue by sending agendas for upcoming meetings directly to the Mashpee TV channel, where residents can access them at their leisure. It is a smart idea, but should, theoretically, be unnecessary given the existence of the town clerk’s office.
Access to agendas for public meetings is a crucial piece of a functional democracy with participatory citizens. People cannot inform themselves on issues they do not know are being discussed, nor can they attend meetings that they do not know are happening. The same goes for journalists, but the inaccessibility has now gone beyond just making our jobs a smidge harder—it is facilitating a generally uninformed public.
Lynne Barbee, CPC member at-large, made a public plea in October to the select board, asking for better communication regarding Town Meeting agendas and communication with the public. But here we are, more than four weeks later, and she is still asking the same questions about meeting agendas and public/online postings that we are: “Is it still the job of the town clerk?” “Who are the people who can do this?” and “How are people going to know if it’s not even on the town calendar?”
Good questions, all of them. We hope there will be some clarity soon.