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MINUTES REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING MAY 28, 1980 PAGE 9 C earlier that I started attending these meetin s g dust about 20 years ago ATTORNEY and one or two of you were already sitting here. I think it would be GALVIN (cont.; fair to say that any legislative body should keep itself above criticism and when the rules are not clearly stated and when the courts themselves disagree, you probably should not have informal discussions at which a full quorum of three out of the five would discuss, in an orderly fashion, any municipal business. Not that it is going to be a deliberative, serious discussion leading to a conclusion, or a decision that would be outside the scope of the normal public meeting, but it is the kind of discussion over which controversy would arise at some point in the future. But there is an information gathering process where two or more members of city councils constantly attend conferences, meetings, League of Municipalities, you sit at a committee meeting, you discuss matters with other city councilmen and if there are two or three members of the City of Falcon Heights Council there or three or four of the City of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which have larger quorums, frankly that is not a public meeting. There are decisions we have received where the courts have tried to create exceptions to the "Open Meeting" Statute and the Supreme Court does not always agree. The Supreme Court held in the case of Credit River, that there was no penalty for aot giving notice of a public meeting and the action taken at the meeting, which was held not to be a public meeting, was valid because there was no penalty declaring the action taken to be invalid. I think as I said at the beginning of the meeting, that this ( is an area of developing law and we can chart general rules, we can apply the two Supreme Court cases and we can apply the Attorney General's opinion where we agree with them, to specific factual decisions and say that is "O.K."or that is a "no no". I think what you have done here, you have a basic disagreement on the process by which you gather information, and controversy is usually good because you do air those issues and you get them on the table. There might be a few ruffled feelings but that has historically been part of the democratic process. If there were not a few ruffled feelings at a Falcon Heights Meeting I'd feel I was at the wrong meeting. It is an area in which reasonable people disagree but, Willis, I don't know of any reason why you should stop your general ex- change of information and opinions but, I think that probably until the legislation is amended or clarified or the Supreme Court finally decides what really constitutes a public meeting or defines deliberative discussion it is likeCaesar's wife, one should avoid all opportunities where one could be criticized. You still have the information gathering process and if you have an energy crisis you shouldn't be sending five people out in five cars with Brad, but there should be some orderly approach. Willis, as you know it is hard to be definitive in these matters but this is one of those instances where it appears to be within the parameters of permissible conduct. Not every body will agree, obviously I disagree with the Attorney General and I have been around long enought to be able to tell him two or three times that he was wrong." Councilmember Larson, who is Planning Commission Liaison, informed COMPREHENSIVE Council that the Comprehensive Plan should be completed by July 1, as PLAN UPDATE planned. Also, a letter from Carl Dale, City Planner, outlining the need for upgrading the business district, was noted.