Campus Community,<\/i><\/p>\n
Here’s an update from NMC President Timothy J. Nelson:<\/i><\/p>\n
As many of you know, at its March 24th\u00a0Board meeting NMC Trustees approved a videotaping policy in order to archive and record all special and regular meetings of the NMC Board. Trustees began reviewing the benefits and concerns regarding adopting this policy last fall.<\/p>\n
NMC and other public bodies have fallen under scrutiny by the Traverse City Record Eagle for not having established policies making the televising or taping of Board meetings available to the general public. All NMC Board meetings and NMC Board of Trustee committee meetings are posted in advance and open to the public. The State of Michigan requires public access to public institutions through its Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Regardless, NMC administration and the Board of Trustees have a long standing and widespread reputation for exceeding those requirements, and being readily available to the general public, as well as the campus constituency.<\/p>\n
As evidenced by the variety of policies (and in some cases, the lack of policies), public bodies throughout our region have developed a multitude of positions regarding the taping of meetings. In fact, NMC\u2019s research confirms that of the 28 community colleges in the State of Michigan, only two (2) video and archive board meetings.\u00a0 Six additional colleges audio record board meetings and destroy the recordings once minutes are approved at the following meeting.<\/p>\n
Recently, I became aware the Traverse City Record Eagle suspected members of the NMC Board of Trustees of operating outside scheduled public meetings to discuss the Board\u2019s recording policy prior to its adoption. Communication between public body board members outside of public meetings is common, as long as it is not a quorum nor is it intended to deliberate or make decisions on behalf of the body.<\/p>\n
Consequently, the Record Eagle filed Freedom of Information Act requests for personal e-mails from NMC Board members to investigate its concerns. The Record Eagle has publicly opined that Trustees\u2019 private e-mails are considered public records of Northwestern Michigan College subject to FOIA. While the law is not clear in this regard, NMC Trustees cooperated with this request by providing individual e-mails between Board members relating to the then ongoing discussions about Board recording policy. On Friday, March 28, the Record Eagle advised my office by mail that,\u00a0in its opinion<\/i>, communications between Trustees in some of the e-mails constituted violations of Michigan\u2019s Open Meetings Act. NMC takes these allegations seriously, and I have referred this matter to NMC\u2019s attorney to investigate and report on these accusations. The Board of Trustees will address the contents of the Record Eagle correspondence and the attorney\u2019s report progress at its\u00a0April 21, 2014\u00a0meeting.<\/p>\n
The full context of the NMC Board\u2019s review of this matter since last fall will confirm its commitment to public input and access to NMC Board meetings. I appreciate your support on behalf of NMC over the years, and I encourage you to await the final report to the NMC Board for a full understanding of the facts.<\/p>\n
Thank you for your patience in allowing this process to be fully reviewed and reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As many of you know, at its March 24th Board meeting NMC Trustees approved a videotaping policy in order to archive and record all special and regular meetings of the NMC Board. Trustees began reviewing the benefits and concerns regarding adopting this policy last fall…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presidents-update"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n