2018-03-19 SWAC Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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business outside of an open meeting. Every meeting must be open to the public, unless there is an executive session or limited meeting as allowed by statute. Boards must provide notice, accept testimony, and keep minutes; and they cannot consider matters not included on the agenda. This becomes important because people from the public may testify on matters not on the agenda. If that happens, it would be the chair’s role to tell that person it is not on the agenda. Committee members also should not allow a discussion to get tangential, because the public would not have had the right of notice and would not have known that would have been discussed. Basically, they cannot discuss issues that are not on the agenda. Mr. Scharf asked whether, if they were working on a component of this project and he had a question for Mr. Okinaka, he could call him and ask the question or if he had to ask it at an open meeting. Ms. Wong said it had to be at a meeting. Two members are allowed to discuss matters but cannot commit to voting on anything. Mr. Okinaka whether the committee has the authority to accept public testimony on something that isn’t on the agenda, and Ms. Wong said they would have to amend the agenda by 2/3 votes to accept the topic. If it’s a reasonably important topic that would affect a number of people it cannot be added to the agenda, and it could be placed on the next agenda. It is up to the chair’s discretion. Mr. Buklarewicz said that Ms. Adams is on the Board of Directors for Recycle Hawai’i, and he is not on the board but attends the meetings. If the SWAC has discussion on something that is also discussed at the board meetings, he and Ms. Adams may need to recuse themselves. Ms. Wong said that if they discuss matters in the board meetings that somehow relate to the SWAC and its purpose, then he should not participate in that discussion. If the SWAC is going to make a decision which would impact how he does his business, he should recuse himself from voting on that decision. Ms. Wong continued with her Sunshine Law presentation, as follows: • “open meeting” requirement. Every meeting will be an open meeting and all persons will be permitted to attend unless otherwise provided by in the constitution. Portions of meetings can be closed if they go into executive session or for other limited exceptions. All meetings will need to be held in a public place, and board shall take official action and votes in public. They cannot vote in executive session. . • If someone is disrupting a meeting to where the meeting cannot carry on, the chair has the discretion to remove that person. • Any interested person may submit written or oral testimony on any agenda item. Most boards set a reasonable time limit of 3 minutes. • The notice and agenda must list all items that the Board intends to consider, and the agenda must be sufficiently detailed as to provide the public with 5