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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH February 24, 2000 Board of Health Minutes Transcription completed by Donna Cates 2 February 24, 2000 and the County for animal shelter operations. Part of that review includes reviewing the shelter procedures. The committee is not going to make any decisions regarding that contract, rather they are going to make recommendations to this Board both for changes they would like to see the A.P.S. make and changes they would recommend that this Board consider in revising the contract. Then this Board would look at those and forward recommendations to the Commissioners. Neither the Commissioners nor this Board or its committee has the authority to require the A.P.S. to do anything. The Commissioners have the authority to either renew the contract, not renew the contract, or ask that certain provisions be included in the contract. Understanding these limitations are important not only for the public, but for committee and Board members to understand. It would be useful for the chair to clarify the scope of the decision and the specific decisions needed at the beginning of the meeting. Page two contains procedural issues that may be subject to change tonight. The sign-up sheets, meeting summaries, and minutes are part of the recommended procedures to be followed. The public does not have any input into the content of the minutes. Presenters who have been invited to meetings can speak to clarify what they said, but it is the committees or Board's responsibility to make sure minutes are correct. There are other requirements the Department must follow regarding access to public documents, and sometimes the distinctions between open meeting law and public access to documents is confusing. Neither the Board nor the Department is required to provide copies of attachments to the agenda at the meeting, nor are we required to send them to people ahead of time. We are required to make them publicly available. The Department's current procedure for the Board of Health meetings is to make a complete agenda packet available at the Orange County Public Library, the Chapel Hill Public Library, the Clerk’s office to the Commissioners. If public members want to look at a complete agenda packet they can access it in those locations. We do bring extra copies to the meeting as a courtesy. The proposed room set-up is intended to have committee members be able to see each other as well as to have some clarity of who is a committee member and who is a member of the public or an invited presenter. Barry Jacobs commented that he thought the guidelines were very important, because while most meetings tend to be very civil, at other times we may have issues that inspire people to be more aggressive. It’s good to have a standard way of dealing with things up front. He used as an illustration the Planning Board Ordinance Review Committee, made up of three people that reviews mobile home park standards. When the three committee members started the meeting, there were so many people from the public in attendance that they had to move into the big room at the courthouse. It’s times like this that it’s good to have a structure you can rely on. Rick Marinshaw suggested that the number of minutes allowed for public comment is 3-5 minutes per person. While it's good to have it specified up front, if there is just one person you have more flexibility and could allow them more time for comments, but if you have 30 or 40 people, it really is important to keep it moving and short. That should be left to the discretion of whoever is running the meeting. For committee meetings, it would be good to state in the beginning that it’s not a public hearing. If it is a committee meeting, we should make it known that the committee will not be making any final decisions, we’re just trying to gather information to present to the board. The full board will vote on it to make any final decisions. We should make known what the committee has the authority to do. I think that it’s good to state up front the expectations of the meeting before you say who is going to make presentations. That leads into what the meeting is about and what you expect to do. Then it leads into who is giving presentations or giving reports. It would also be useful to mention to the public that written comments could be submitted to the Health Director or the Board.