Next Tuesday’s City Council meeting agenda is out, and as usual, it features the usual assortment of mundane, intriguing and potentially controversial items.

The one sure to generate the most discussion is the Public Hearing on ADU’s.

Expect a marathon discussion featuring both speakers and councilors. Prior to this week’s Planning Board meeting, my council sources on each side of the issue believed the votes were there to adopt the ordinance. Whether that’s still the case, or whether the language will be tweaked Tuesday night, remains to be seen. Either way, make extra popcorn.

But the item that caught my eye this week is this one;

By my count, this is the 3rd time in the last few months Councilor Erik Gitschier has filed a motion to release executive session minutes, including at the previous meeting July 11th. Understandably, it takes time for the Law Department to produce these minutes, but Gitschier clearly feels strongly about this issue. I happen to agree, having harped on it during my radio days as well.

Which is why I believe the motion doesn’t go far enough.

If transparency is the goal, the way executive session minutes are produced isn’t ending up in the net.  We’re actually getting more “seconds” than minutes, little more than window dressing, designed to give the impression of transparency while in reality continuing to keep information out of the public eye. Trust me, I’ve seen many instances where what’s released is nothing compared to the good stuff I’ve been told went on behind closed doors.

Let’s get with the times, folks. It’s 2023. The technology exists to record executive session meetings and produce them in their entirety for the public and the press to see. Forget the sanitized Cliff Notes version of what occurred. Let’s have the actual words spoken by the Councilors, the Managers and all individuals in attendance, with no chance that pertinent and relevant information is omitted. Transparency in its purest form; video and audio capturing exactly what’s said and done.

A few years back, Councilor Rita Mercier joked that I was “the 10th City Councilor.” Under the new system, I’d be the 12th, so allow me a point of personal privilege to suggest amending Councilor Gitschier’s motion to include the recording of all executive sessions and the release of those recordings as part of any “minutes” produced. Ditto for School Committee meetings.

If we can access Lowell Telecommunications recordings of every Council meeting’s minutiae, we should also have access to the items that are often the most controversial and impactful in nature. If transparency is the goal, let’s really get “inside” Lowell.