Four Chelsea public bodies met on Tuesday evening, one after another, and decided or advanced business worth several million dollars. One of the four was recorded. The other three met in Committee Room 305, which has no working stream, and the minutes are not posted.
This is not a complaint about secrecy. Every one of the three posted a notice, listed its agenda and was open to anyone who walked in. It is a description of what the public record of a Tuesday night in Chelsea actually consists of, which is four agendas and one video.
What was in front of each
Planning Board, 5 p.m., council chambers. The public hearing on the comprehensive master plan, Chelsea ¡Pa’Lante, Onward! This one was streamed, and the recording runs two hours and thirty-nine minutes. What is in the plan, and when the Planning Board votes on it.
Ways and Means, 5:30 p.m., Room 305. Three money items:
- Order 26F39, appropriating $116,942.80 out of the TNC Surcharge Distribution Fund, money the state sends Chelsea from ride-hailing fees, into the DPW streets and sidewalks capital road improvements line for sidewalk and roadway repair.
- Order 26F40, the prior-year bills, $26,546.88 covering invoices from FY21, FY23, FY25 and FY26.
- Order 26F41, the cost items in the collective bargaining agreement with Teamsters Local 25 for the city’s E-911 supervisors, running January 1, 2025 through June 30, 2027.
Conference, 6 p.m., Room 305. The solar package the council sent to committee on September 14:
- Order 2656, twenty-year agreements with BWC Merriam Brook, LLC and Blue Meadow Brook, LLC to distribute funds to low-income participants in Chelsea Electricity Choice under the state’s SMART solar incentive program.
- Order 2657, an electricity bill credit purchase agreement with 978 Solar Development, LLC for up to thirty years.
- Orders 2659 and 2660, creating a Low-Income Solar Energy Revolving Fund, numbered 4644, under G.L. c. 44, section 53E½.
Charter Review Committee, 7 p.m., Room 305. Part IV of the charter, which governs the city manager, plus outstanding items from Parts I, IX and X. Part X is where the charter still refers to “the receiver,” and the chair’s own proposal strikes both references. What was in that packet.
The one question Tuesday should have answered
Order 26F40 is the item worth following. On September 14 the council was asked to pay $26,546.88 in old bills, including two Tufts Construction lead replacement invoices from FY21 and FY23 totalling $17,666.01. It went to Ways and Means. On September 21 the council was asked to pay a different, smaller set, $12,505.14, under a new order, and the old invoices were not on it.
We wrote on Monday that the larger list had quietly stopped being asked for. Ways and Means had 26F40 in front of it on Tuesday. Whatever the committee decided about those invoices, whether it recommended payment, sent them back for documentation or let them sit, is the answer to that question, and it is not yet public.
Why Room 305 has no stream
The Charter Review Committee looked at this directly. Its August 3 minutes record that members “discussed the possibility of allowing for remote participation, but determined the logistical limitations of the current video conferencing equipment made it too challenging at this time.”
The council chambers on the third floor are wired, which is why the Planning Board hearing is on YouTube and the September 21 council meeting is too. Room 305 is a committee room with a table in it. The committee that meets there most often is the one rewriting the city’s constitution.
What the law requires
Massachusetts does not require a city to stream a subcommittee meeting. The Open Meeting Law, G.L. c. 30A, section 22, requires something narrower and older: that minutes be “created and approved in a timely manner,” and that they be “available upon request by any person within ten days.”
Chelsea’s practice is to attach committee minutes to a later council packet, which means the ordinary route to finding out what a committee did on a Tuesday is to wait for the next regular meeting’s packet and read the committee report. We have written about that lag before.
Four bodies, one video, and a set of decisions that reach the sidewalk repair budget, a thirty-year solar contract and the text of the city charter. Anyone who attended any of the three unrecorded meetings and can say what happened is welcome to write to [email protected].