Winter Springs advisory committee elects officers; city clerk reviews Sunshine Law and records rules

The Winter Springs Parks & Recreation Mobility Advisory Committee elected Jason Burns chair and Leah Wiseman vice chair at the committee’s first meeting, then heard a City Clerk briefing on open-meetings, public-records and ethics rules.

City Clerk Christian Gowen told the committee that Florida’s open-meeting rules require meetings to be open to the public, reasonably noticed and recorded. “Meetings must be open to the public,” Gowen said, later summarizing the statutory prohibition on private communications among members: anything the committee “could foreseeably be discussing and making a recommendation on, you should not be talking about amongst each other.” He warned members that violations can carry civil fines and, in some cases, criminal penalties.

The training explained public-records obligations—“public records, in our case as a local government in Florida means pretty much everything we do”—and advised committee members to route multi-member communications through the clerk’s office to simplify public-records responses. Gowen also summarized the state code of ethics and potential penalties for ethics violations.

Committee members asked procedural questions about fact-finding visits to parks and whether members may inspect sites together; Gowen discouraged multi-member site visits because informal discussion outside a noticed meeting could create a Sunshine Law violation. He said members may visit parks individually, gather observations and then place items on a future meeting agenda for public discussion.

The committee now has an elected chair and vice chair and is expected to use the clerk’s office for agenda additions and scheduling. The next regular meeting is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 6; members were advised to submit agenda material at least 10 days before a meeting to allow posting and packet preparation.