Minutes could seem like hours in Frelinghuysen, where the township committee will be looking into ways to tweak how the written records of its meetings are kept in particular, those of verbal statements by meeting participants.
Committee member Brian James expressed concern that public comments by town officials and the public could be mischaracterized when distilled to notes and highlights.
“To me, our minutes are riddled with what people said, including what was done as well,” James said.
He proposed excluding those comments, particularly those that summarized those remarks, unless there was a way of including the full text in the minutes.
“I think that we should take a look at that and see if we can remove things that are said, because I think that unless a whole entire speech is attached to the minutes, it’s biased whether you like it or not,” James said. “What one person thinks is important to say, another person might not think it’s important to say.”
James referred to Robert’s Rules of Order, widely considered to be the “bible” of parliamentary procedure, to which most local governments follow to various extents.
“It says ‘in an ordinary society, the minutes should contain mainly a record of what was done at a meeting, not just said by the members,’” James said. “The minutes must never reflect the secretary’s opinion, favorable or otherwise, on anything said or done.”
James emphasized that he wasn’t suggesting anyone was deliberately injecting bias into the minutes. Rather, he said, he felt that any summary of comments from a public meeting are inherently going to be skewed because they are not what the person said in full.
James asked township attorney Susan Sharpe for an opinion, and she pointed out that Robert’s Rules of Order guides meetings such as those in Frelinghuysen and most other municipalities, but the procedures in the book are not legally binding. Among the rules that a town government body must abide by are those in the state Open Public Meetings Act, which requires minutes to be a comprehensible overview of a meeting, not an actual transcription.
The level of details is left to each governing body, so the Frelinghuysen committee has latitude. Sharpe added that complete audio recordings of township meetings are available to the public.
“Robert’s rule is a guide to parliamentary procedures, which most towns have adopted,” Sharpe said. “But it’s not some sort of a hyper-technical book that needs to be applied at all times.”
Mayor Kirk Perez said he favors keeping the minutes brief but did agree with another suggestion James had regarding the different committee reports in the minutes. Each committee member is assigned to several committees such as parks and recreation and department of public works. Instead of having committee chair’s report summarized similar to how brevity is brought to public comments, the full reports of each committee would be attached to the minutes as written by the chairs.
The next Frelinghuysen committee meeting will be held on Feb. 18, 2026.
Joe brings decades of journalism experience to the Ridge View Echo, covering everything from local school boards to the U.S. Supreme Court. A former National Law Journal editor and Columbia Law School press officer, he now enjoys telling community stories in Blairstown, where he lives with his wife, Rose, and their two dachshunds.
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
- Joe Phalon, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/joe-phalon-contributing-writer/
