But before we start um I would like to call uh City of Hudson Planning Commission January meeting to order.

Um we have a quorum present.

The first agenda item tonight is board training.

Um after which should it should conclude about 7 30.

We'll move into the regular order of business.

And at that point, I will turn it over to our city solicitor.

All right.

Thank you, Ron.

Uh first off, I just kind of want to give an overview or an orientation, if you will, of why we're here tonight.

One of the priorities that the planning staff, myself, the administration talked about was uh over the last couple years is incorporating an opportunity for our boards and commissions to have an annual meeting where we kind of you know refresh on some of the topics that hover around everything we do in uh local government, and then also have an opportunity for us to engage in some question and answer and uh do a look back.

Tonight we're gonna start uh pretty simple, a real high level view.

We're gonna hit um three three different parts.

Uh the first part's gonna be about sunshine laws, second part we're gonna talk uh briefly about ethics as it relates to land use boards, and then the um Greg and Nick are going to talk a little bit about some of the I don't know, best practices or you know, the the things that we think about when we look back on our years of working with land use boards.

Uh now, but before I get moving, as many of you have seen in the handout that was uh sent out as part of the agenda, there is a lot of material here.

So uh if I can ask if you kind of hold back on your questions until we get through it, we'll try to work through it pretty quickly.

And I was thinking that as I mentioned, there's three main parts.

Maybe after we finish the sunshine law section, you can ask if there's any questions, and we'll hit briefly the ethics section ethics section and see if there's any questions there, and then finally when we get into the conducting meetings section, we can ask questions after that.

So without further ado, we'll kick right into the sunshine laws part.

So the Ohio Sunshine Laws are the is the Open Meetings Act and the Public Records Act.

Now, uh first, we'll talk a little bit about public meetings.

So the open meetings act requires public bodies in Ohio to take official action and conduct all deliberations upon official business only in public meetings where the public may attend and observe.

Public bodies must provide advanced notice to the public indicating when and where each meeting will take place, and in the case of special meetings, the specific topics that the public body will discuss.

Uh the public body may must take full and accurate minutes of all their meetings and make them minutes available to the public.

Now, definitionally speaking, uh public body is any decision-making body of a municipality and includes any committees or subcommittees thereof.

Uh, for example, an urban design review board uh that provides advice and recommendation to a city council on uh land development issues, uh that would be a public body, but it doesn't apply to individual public officials again as opposed to a public body or to meetings that are held uh with individual public officials.

Now there are two types of meetings.

There's regular meetings and special meetings.

Regular meetings are meetings that are held at pre-scheduled intervals.

Uh the time and place uh must be noticed to the public.

Special meetings are basically any meeting outside of your regular meetings.

Uh the notable part of a special meeting is that not only do the time and place need to be noticed, the time, place, and purpose needs to be noticed to the public.

Uh the public body must give at least 24 hours advanced notice of their special meetings, and you are limited to your discussion at a special meeting of only those topics that were noticed to the public.

Now, if we dig a little deeper into all of this, uh the OMA, the Open Meetings Act defines a meeting as a prearranged gathering of a majority of members of the public body for the purpose of discussing public business.

So it has three parts prearranged gathering, majority of the members, and for the purpose of discussing public business.

And it doesn't matter what you call it.

You can call it a meeting, a workshop, a work session, retreat, uh the name of what you're doing doesn't matter.

If the gathering itself satisfies that above three-part test, pre-arranged, majority of the members and discussing public business, then your gathering is subject to the uh OMA, the Open Meetings Act.

Now the OMA governs pre-arranged discussions, importantly, not unplanned encounters between members of a public body.

I think uh we could probably all agree that that that would uh be a difficult uh rule to tell if everybody in town had to avoid each other if they wanted to serve on a public body, that probably wouldn't make much sense.

So again, it's pre-arranged discussions, not unplanned encounters.

Uh however, pre-arranged does not require that all the members participate at the same time.

Uh, and this this is important, especially in the modern age, and likely or additionally, uh, especially important during uh the COVID era.

Uh, so I'm gonna give an example.

Uh like I said, it the OMA doesn't require the members to participate at the same time.

So, for example, a series of emails that are exchanged among a majority of the board members could constitute a pre-arranged gathering.

Uh, in other words, and all of you that have uh uh done the uh one-on-one training with me, you'll probably remember this.

When you see when you receive materials for your meeting, or any time, frankly, if you receive something via email that relates to your public business, do not hit reply all when the email is sent out to everybody.

So just don't hit reply all.

If you remember that, there might be three things we talked about today, just keep that one down.

Don't hit reply all.

Uh now this will sound a little strange given what we're going through right now, but a member of a public body in uh in the uh non-amended open meetings act must attend in person to be considered present, vote, or count as part of the quorum.

Uh but as uh many of you may know, uh temporary legislation was passed this past year by the Ohio General Assembly to deal with the COVID-19 disease pandemic that has permitted us to meet remotely in the fashion we're meeting right now.

Uh meetings must be open to the public at all times.

Notably, the OMA does not provide the right to attendees to be heard, however, many local charters and local codes secure a right for the public to be heard via one, your administrative procedure.

So here I would say that'd be a public hearing on an application item or explicit regulations.

So, for example, uh the uh Hudson Charter guarantees that uh any resident at Hudson shall be entitled to speak at all meetings of council where legislative action may be taken.

Uh and I always think that's kind of a good time to note that while the OMA controls statewide on matters of public bodies uh and their meetings, local political subdivisions may pass laws that aren't in conflict with that, uh, such as the aforementioned Hudson Charter Provision, which secures a right for residents to uh be heard at council meetings where legislative action may be taken.

And you know, as a quick aside, that that was a commonly discussed issue as the COVID-19 pandemic began among practitioners as it wasn't it wasn't just how how do we safely navigate the uh open meetings act, the OMA, but also how do you uh deal and accommodate local charter provisions that may require uh certain regulations above and beyond.

Uh now I will say there's one way after all that it you know it sounds like it's very simple.

It's like just do all of the business out in the public, but there is one way a public body's permitted to exclude the public, that'd be the executive session.