City of Venice city attorney Kelly Fernandez led the citys annual board-member training on Floridas Sunshine Law and the Public Records Act, telling advisory board members the session is required as part of a settlement tied to earlier litigation and that the material remains essential.

"My name is Kelly Fernandez. Im the city attorney," she said, opening the training and explaining the city must conduct annual instruction for advisory boards under a settlement agreement. Fernandez summarized the Sunshine Laws three basic requirements: meetings must be open to the public, reasonable notice must be provided and minutes must be taken.

Why it matters: Fernandez said violations can carry criminal penalties in severe cases, fines or noncriminal sanctions, the need to redo board actions that are voided, and the potential for awards of attorneys fees. She cited the citys own 2009 litigation as a costly example and cautioned members to avoid informal communications that could be construed as decisions made outside public meetings.

Fernandez laid out specific prohibitions and guidance. She said members of the same board must not have substantive discussions about board business outside of a publicly noticed meeting: "Do not talk to your fellow board members about items of board business or things you think will become items of board business except when youre sitting up here during your actually actually held meetings." She added that even seemingly routine activities, such as jointly visiting a project site, can create problematic appearances and should generally be avoided.

On public records, Fernandez stressed that any document related to board business including emails, notes, texts and social-media posts may be a public record requiring retention. "Social media is just more difficult because the city is not involved in your social media at all," she said, advising members who post or receive substantive messages to screenshot them and forward copies to the clerks office or records custodian so the city can preserve responsive records.

Fernandez described a narrow exception for ephemeral scheduling messages: a text changing a meeting time may be treated as temporary and need not be retained, but she warned that if the message contains substantive reasons or decisions it must be preserved. In response to an attendees question, she recommended phone calls for sensitive communications where feasible because the content of an unrecorded phone call is not itself a public record.

The training included recent case examples from Floridas appellate decisions and local controversies. Fernandez discussed a 2023 concurring opinion in Gillums v. State that criticized routine violations and reiterated that the law applies equally to elected and appointed officials. She also reviewed regional episodes involving the Jacksonville utility authority, an airport board matter that led to arrests and resignations, and a New College of Florida dispute that resulted in a $125,000 award in attorneys fees related to retention of personal-device text messages.

Practical steps Fernandez urged board members to take were straightforward: use the city email account for board business, avoid texting fellow board members about substantive agenda items, forward any substantive personal-device communications to the clerks office for preservation, and bring any inadvertent private discussions into the public meeting record to "cure" potential violations. She said staff may not act as intermediaries to transmit a board members position to another board member.

The session closed with an interactive quiz covering common scenarios for example, whether two board members may discuss an agenda item after a meeting (answer: maybe, if the matter is conclusively finished) and whether two members may jointly visit a site (answer: no, due to appearance risks). Fernandez then opened for questions and reiterated that the clerks office and the city attorney are available to help board members navigate specific situations.

The transcript does not specify the meeting date; Fernandez identified the session as the 2025 board training. The clerks office representative in the meeting encouraged members to regularly access their city email and contact IT if they have login issues. Class was dismissed at the end of the session.