Arlington residents for several years have been following the saga of Missing Middle. Now it’s a case of missing minutes.
Minutes, which give a description of the proceedings of each County Board meeting and chronicle the actions taken, haven’t been posted for public review since April.
The problem? Staffing issues in the office of clerk to the Board.
“We’re behind,” acknowledged Mason Kushnir, who was appointed clerk by Board members in July. Kushnir succeeded Kendra Jacobs, who had served as clerk since 2018.
The delay is “a function of my own limited time and resources due to transitioning into the clerk role over the summer, and the time needed to recruit and hire up a deputy, who we anticipate will be starting in mid-November,” Kushnir told ARLnow.
Kushnir said the goal is to have minutes from meetings that occurred through the end of May ready for Board approval at the November meeting, “then to be fully caught up and back on track by either December or January.”
In the absence of approved minutes, he said residents who have any questions about actions taken during Board meetings can call his office at 703-228-3150 or reach out by email at [email protected].
Clerk to the Board is one of the very few positions in Arlington government that reports directly to the five Board members. Others include the county manager, county attorney and internal auditor.
Kushnir had been serving as staff aide to then-Board member Katie Cristol when he joined the clerk’s office as deputy clerk in 2019.
State law requires that minutes be taken during open meetings of elected bodies, approved by the governing body and released to the public. They are optional during closed sessions, and localities are not obligated to release them to the public from legally constituted closed meetings.
While state law sets out what must be included in the minutes, it does not set a deadline for those minutes to be prepared for and adopted by the elected body in question.
