To meet or not to meet? That was the Wawarsing Town Council's question last Monday.

On Monday, July 28, four members of the council, Supervisor Ed Jennings, Councilmen John Gavaris and Tom Geelan, and Councilwoman Theresa Hyatt, gathered at Town Hall at around 6:30 p.m., to look into holding an official emergency board meeting to discuss the recently approved resolution giving Wawarsing's official support to the Western Mohegan Indians and their bid for state-recognized tribal status and a proposed casino.

During the break between the Ulster Tomorrow presentation and the Village Board meeting that followed it last Monday at the village Government Center, this reporter was approached by Councilman John Gavaris to see if I could briefly attend an unscheduled meeting at Town Hall, where they would discuss developments regarding the Western Mohegan Indians. When it was realized that attending the impromptu meeting would mean the village board meeting would go without coverage, Councilman Gavaris sent a text message saying, "We're not going to meet till our regular meeting on next Thursday…"

That following Thursday, July 31, Jane Eck spoke with the Journal, filling in the details of her own experience, and saying that she believed that because the four board members — making a quorum — gathered at Town Hall together and discussed town business, the gathering was a town board meeting.

Usually, if the town board plans to conduct a workshop meeting on Monday, it takes place at 3:30 p.m. in Town Hall, and the media and the town clerk are notified in advance so as to publicize it. In certain cases, such advanced notice isn't possible, like in times of crisis or emergency.

Eck said that she was called at home by Council members Gavaris and Hyatt on speakerphone, asking her to come to Town Hall to take the minutes of the proposed meeting, but she refused, citing the open meeting law and the lack of an emergency situation.

"What's the emergency? Do we have a tornado going through? Do we have a flood? Do we have a fire? Do we have a storm that I don't know about, where you have to call an emergency meeting? Then I would go," said Eck. Hyatt told her that it was a case of possible litigation, and having to do with the Western Mohegan resolution that was passed on July 17.

"I said to her, 'that's not an emergency.'"

Eck said that she asked Town Supervisor Ed Jennings the next day what had transpired at Town Hall. She reported that Jennings had told her that the aforementioned members had a discussion but did not act on what was discussed. Based on that conversation and her own experiences, she called Bob Freeman, the executive director of the Department of State's Committee on Open Government. She said that he told her that the board members had conducted an illegal meeting, in that they had not notified the public or the media far enough in advance.

However, Councilman John Gavaris filled in gaps, saying in a phone interview on Monday that while the board members gathered in Town Hall, an actual meeting that would be covered under the Open Meeting Law did not occur.

"We did not have a meeting," said Gavaris, explaining that because no reporter from the Journal would be able to attend the meeting, the board members disbanded and had no further discussion. "There were four of us there, Tom [Geelan] and Ed [Jennings] wound up coming down, but once they showed up, we decided not to have it because, honestly, one of the reasons is this whole cloak and dagger situation that's been painted around the board," he explained, referring to the recent reports in the Journal concerning a private meeting with Wal-Mart.

"We did not have the meeting, absolutely not. Nothing was discussed in detail — there was nothing.

"The only thing we decided unofficially was to wait until the Thursday meeting to do anything we were going to do," he said.

Open Government Committee Executive Director Bob Freeman explained the Open Meeting Law in a phone interview later that day.

"If a majority gathers to conduct public business, irrespective of the absence of the intent to take action, it is indeed a meeting covered by the Open Meetings Law," he said. "If there was a majority present and they were discussing what they were later going to discuss at the more formal meeting, that first gathering would itself have constituted a meeting covered under the Open Meeting Law."

However, when the story as told by Gavaris was related to him, he suggested that the meeting being disbanded when the media or public could not be present may have prevented the meeting from violating the Open Meetings Law.

"It seems that they recognized that the open meetings law would apply, and probably did the right thing by saying, 'we can't hold a valid meeting, let's just not.'

"They recognized what might have been an error, and I don't think we can be too critical of that, I think we should sort of pat them on the back, don't you think?

"It sounds as though they tried to do the right thing," said Freeman.

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