Tonight’s meeting concerning paving the Waterfront and the “Waterfront Task Force” was never posted.

I don’t know much, well, I don’t know anything about the “open meeting laws,” but I do know this, it’s always good to have an open and transparent government—it doesn’t hurt to avoid the appearance of being secretive.

I was going to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt here. I thought surely there must have been a slip up somewhere, these things do happen.

However, I just received an email from Albert Decie saying that he in fact did check with the Mayor’s office, and apparently the Mayor’s office did not feel this meeting of the Task Force qualified as a meeting that needed to be posted.

And to quote Mr. Decie in a follow-up email “I just talked with the Police Department conference room scheduling person. The scheduling of the conference room at the police station for this evening at 6 PM is listed as scheduled by Mayor Moak.”

(The fact that anyone who attends this meeting gets to be considered part of the Waterfront Task Force gets odder and odder.)

The whole thing is very odd indeed.

I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. But I would think that the fact that this seemingly informative if not important meeting is taking place without being posted would ensure somewhat of a skeptical crowd.

I’ll be interested to find out.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport