I need a good municipal lawyer. Maybe Larry Casto can help us out. A couple hours ago, Councilman Scott Griggs posted a note he’d received from the mayor’s office notifying him that a Council briefing on the bond program has been postponed. Here’s why:
“At our last meeting, I told you that AC and I were planning on staff briefing council on December 7th to select the citywide projects. This has now changed again, and so I wanted to let you know what is the new plan is. The Mayor has now decided that the bond briefing cannot be given that day. Instead, he is going to talk to council members individually to get consensus on the citywide projects. Staff will continue to work with each council member to develop the district lists of streets, small drainage, parks, and other district needs. Because we now do not know how much each district is getting, the district list will need to be prioritized across all project types so that we can just go down the list of projects till we hit the dollar amount for each district once we get that number. We have a follow up meeting with you on December 12th to finalize your district list.”
Can someone tell me how this scenario doesn’t constitute a “walking quorum”? A walking quorum, if you’ve never heard the phrase, is when “members of a governmental body meet in a series of meetings in person or via phone or other electronic communication in numbers less than a quorum to discuss public business and avoid the requirements of the [Texas Open Meetings Act].” Did the mayor’s office not just send out a note to council members that essentially says, “Hey, everyone, the mayor has decided to cancel that meeting and break the law instead”? I’m not naive enough to think that this never happens, but people don’t usually send memos announcing their intentions to do it — do they?
P.S.: If Griggs and Philip Kingston and maybe Sandy Greyson will start a band called Walking Quorum, I will definitely go see that band.
