Town clerk: Riverhead will return to taking verbatim minutes of Town Board meetings

Riverhead Town Clerk James Wooten says the town is looking to bring back verbatim transcripts of meeting proceedings, including comments by members of the public made during public hearings and other public portions of the meetings.

The town will use artificial intelligence for the transcription services, provided through a new online platform for managing meeting agendas and minutes, the town clerk said at the Aug. 6 Town Board meeting.

At the invitation of Supervisor Tim Hubbard, Wooten responded to criticism by Riverhead resident Cindy Clifford, of the town’s undisclosed decision to do away with creating verbatim minutes of Town Board meetings. 

Beginning with the second meeting in January, the Town Board meeting minutes include only actions taken on resolutions, with the names of movers, seconders and votes of the five-member board recorded. The minutes are generated by the town’s agenda management system, provided by Granicus. Since the second meeting in January, there has been no record of any testimony at public hearings during the meetings and no record of public comment during public portions of the meetings. 

This is a sharp departure from the practice in place in Riverhead Town since the 1970s, when Allen Smith was elected supervisor and verbatim minutes were instituted. The minutes-taking practice continued until the first meeting in January of this year. 

New York State’s Open Meetings Law does not require verbatim minutes, or even a written summary of actions and comments during meetings. The content of the minutes kept since January meet the minimum requirements of state law.  

Clifford brought the matter up at the July 16 Town Board meeting, and Wooten told her at that meeting that the town website has video recordings of every meeting. He maintained at that time that verbatim minutes were rendered unnecessary by the videos. The cost of transcription would run $20,000 per year, Wooten said, and was deemed unnecessary.

Clifford followed up her comments at the meeting — which are not part of the written public record of the meeting — with a letter to the board. The town clerk has been including copies of all letters received by his office in the Town Board agenda packet for each meeting.Clifford’s letter was therefore part of the Aug. 6 meeting agenda, along with numerous other letters.

MORE COVERAGE:

Poof! Riverhead disappears Town Board meeting minutes, without public discussion or mention

At the Aug. 6 meeting, Wooten defended his decision and said the Town Board had nothing to do with it. 

Wooten called the commentary he read on social media as “misinformation,” and expressed dismay that the town was being criticized for lack of transparency. “We have a digital video recording of every meeting,” he said. “Nothing is more transparent than a video,” he said. “There is nothing more transparent than a video. It shows you tone. It shows you what was said. It shows you reactions. It shows you facial expressions. There’s nothing more transparent than watching something or watching somebody, how they speak. Speaking is very important. And how you say something and how you react to something can’t be written. It has to be watched,” he said.

“And I try not to look at the blogs,” Wooten said, though it was unclear if he was referring to social media comments or a RiverheadLOCAL editorial published on July 29.  

Nevertheless, Wooten announced on Aug. 6 that the town was looking at new software that “has the ability with the AI that we’ve been talking about, to go ahead— and I can earmark video and get a live transcription, an AI transcription of the verbiage that’s used. And that’s easy enough to print out and have my staff,  if it needs to be cleaned up— because you know how it is, when you voice text, it doesn’t always say what you meant it to say — but that would be coupled with video, we’ll be able to go ahead and create a verbatim transcript,” he said, adding, “which, I mean, other towns don’t do verbatim transcripts. They do minutes based on what’s there. I mean, there’s some things I can add to the minutes, like who’s spoken in favor or against, but verbatim minutes is something that no other town does. We’re looking to improve that.” 

In an interview last week, Wooten said Riverhead will be migrating from the platform provided by Granicus that it’s been using since 2017. The Granicus platform Riverhead  and other local towns have been using is “sunsetting,” Wooten said, meaning it is being discontinued by the developer and will no longer be supported. 

Wooten said he has been working with the town’s IT department to evaluate other available systems for municipal recordkeeping, including a newer one developed by Granicus. He said he and the head of Riverhead’s IT Department, Network and Systems Administrator Chip Kreymborg, favor a system implemented by the Town of Brookhaven in 2019 when Brookhaven migrated from the Granicus platform currently used by Riverhead.

“I think we’re close to making a recommendation to the Town Board,” Wooten said.

The platform in use by Brookhaven, called Civic Plus, specializes in technology products for local government. It can provide municipal websites, records request management, agenda and meeting management and a host of other functions. The company boasts of its ability to deliver “integrated solutions” for all municipal and civic needs.

Brookhaven has had a good experience with the company, which is based in Kansas and, according to its website, has more than 12,000 municipal users.

CivicPlus and the other two platforms being assessed by Riverhead — One Meeting by Granicus and e-Scribe — all have AI components for minutes transcription, Wooten said.

“Civic Plus has a lot of options,” Wooten said. “​​Most of it’s designed around public access, you know, to make it easier for transparency and the public to tap in and get what they need to get. So that’s what everything is built around for them. And we like that,” he said.

Civic Plus is also on the short list of companies evaluated by the town’s IT department to “take over” the town’s website, Wooten said. He said it makes sense to have the same company provide the platform for the clerk’s functions and the town’s website design and development, too. 

Wooten said every discussion he’s had about minutes, “even prior to Cindy Clifford saying anything, was about doing these, because I enjoy going back and reading some of the stuff too,” he said.

“We’re going to move back to having minutes,” Wooten said, “using the AI.”

Wooten offered no explanation why he didn’t reply to Clifford at the July 16 meeting that the town was already working on it. 

He maintained during the interview that nobody looks at meeting minutes anyway. “And Cindy’s the only one that noticed it.” Wooten said he spoke with “Diane Wilhelm about this even before I ran.”

The former town clerk brought a proposal to eliminate verbatim minutes to a Town Board work session discussion on Nov. 1, 2018. Wilhelm suggested using summaries rather than verbatim minutes. Then-Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith expressed support for relying on videos as meeting minutes. 

Deputy Town Attorney Annemarie Prudenti said during that work session that, from an attorney’s perspective, she thought taking verbatim minutes was the best practice. She also opined that “if you were going to deviate from your current practice, it would require a vote to do that.” 

Then-Council Member Jodi Giglio voiced strong objection to using summaries or videos alone, arguing that verbatim minutes provide better accessibility and  accountability and a better record for posterity. 

All council members, including, at the time, Wooten and Tim Hubbard,  supported retaining verbatim minutes. “The minutes are very important,” Hubbard said.