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Trainer: post site visits or caution participants when questions could trigger deliberation
Summary
Michelle Randello advised that site visits need not always be posted, but if factual Q&A or follow-up questioning is likely to become deliberation, posting or instructing attendees to save questions is the safer practice.
Randello addressed the common problem of site visits where board members ask factual questions that can drift into deliberation. She said the open meeting law does not require posting site visits if no deliberation occurs, but recommended posting when members anticipate substantive questions or when the landowner will not allow the public on the property.
"If you know that that type of questioning may happen, it's the safer thing as opposed to meeting," Randello said, recommending that boards either post the visit or instruct participants to save their questions for the formally posted meeting and to document what was observed when the formal meeting reopens.
