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Ohio’s Open Meetings Act does not specify where a school board or city council must hold its public meetings. A decades-old Ohio attorney general opinion says that the spirit of the public meetings law “would appear to require” that meetings be held within the jurisdiction in question.
O’Leary said this is the third year Vandalia-Butler’s board will meet at the Columbus conference. As with meetings inside the district, all non-executive session portions of the meeting will be recorded and available to residents after the fact.
“This has been the practice in the past few years, and I’m not aware of any big concerns raised,” O’Leary said.
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An agenda sent out Friday said the board will hear a Business Advisory Council report, discuss support of Senate Bill 216, vote on two minor personnel items and an extension of the district’s electric supply contract, and finish with an executive session “to consider the employment of a public employee.”
O’Leary said there won’t be any significant vote after the closed executive session.
“I can understand why somebody would ask that, and if we continue to have this meeting, we need to recognize that that probably does raise an eyebrow,” he said.
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Other local jurisdictions have held out-of-town retreats in the past, with Kettering City Council doing so at Hueston Woods, near Oxford, and Dayton City Commission holding retreats in Springfield and the northern Cincinnati suburbs.
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