As reported previously, former Township Manager Capela’s employment was terminated on September 29, 2014. Efforts have been made to learn more about the discussions that took place at the meeting.  However,  there is no video or audio recording of the meeting proceedings.  

In an October 9, 2014 Rochester Post article, Supervisor Gonser stated:

“There was no time to get the meeting televised.” 

At the October 14, 2014 BOT meeting, Treasurer Langlois corrected Gonser’s statement, and pointed out that there apparently was an administrative decision made to not record or televise the special meeting as well as the Budget Workshop that had been scheduled for that date. Previous Budget workshops had been recorded and televised.

A few days after the September 29th meeting, the author of this post called the Township Office to determine if an audio recording had been made of the meeting.  They informed me that there was no audio recording of the meeting.  In the past, audio recordings were made of a meeting if it was known that it would not be video recorded.

Here is the video of Treasurer Langlois’ correction of Gonser’s statement:

Here are the copies of the minutes of the September 29th meetings (approved on October 14th):

September 29, 2014 Special meeting minutes

Sept 29th Budget workshop meeting minutes

Why is this important to the citizens of Oakland Township?  Supervisor Gonser ran on a platform of transparency.  Treasurer Langlois has pointed out that the administration (either Capela or Gonser) apparently made a decision to not televise the meeting proceedings.  We as citizens will never know what really happened at the meeting, since there is no audio or video recording of that very important meeting.  Does that sound like transparency to you?

Richard Michalski