The Apopka City Council voted 4-1 on adopting a resolution standardizing meeting minutes for consistency and accuracy, with Commissioner Nick Nesta in opposition.

At the Wednesday meeting, City Clerk Susan Bone introduced Resolution 2025-33, which proposed a meeting minutes style that would focus on action, including who made the motion, seconded it, the results of the vote taken, and the names of the people who gave public comment.

Bone said she researched other municipalities’ meeting minutes policies and discovered they reflect the action style of minutes. She also reviewed Robert’s Rules of Order for conducting meetings.

She acknowledged that at the July 16 City Council meeting, the mayor and commissioners discussed her writing a policy but never voted on it. However, she felt that it was important for her office to craft a policy.

“Basically, what I want to do is try to lessen the amount of discussion and – not necessarily discussion, but the back and forth talking and things like that in the meeting minutes,” Bone told the City Council on Wednesday.

Bone said she wrote the resolution with a focus on adhering to Florida Statutes 286.011, pertaining to public meetings and records. She said the law require minutes to be brief and not be verbatim.

“The minutes of a meeting of any such board or commission of any such state agency or authority shall be promptly recorded, and such records shall be open to public inspection,” Florida Statutes 286.011 states.

Vice Mayor/Commissioner Diane Velazquez praised Bone for writing the meeting minutes policy, mentioning that a clear policy is needed for reference.

Nesta noted that the Council voted 3-2 on July 16 in opposition to city attorney Cliff Shepard drafting a meeting minutes policy for later presentation. Nesta and Velazquez voted for it; Commissioners Nadia Anderson and Alexander H. Smith, and Mayor Bryan Nelson opposed.

Nesta said Bone drafting a policy goes against the council’s will and criticized how Shepard still reviewed the resolution for a fee when he could have written it in the first place.

Nesta said he couldn’t vote for the resolution because of a lack of consistency in applying decorum rules.

“The games that are played non-stop up here, with agendas and minutes and things of that,” Nesta said, “I mean, it’s just, what’s next? I just, I can’t see it, so that, yes, I appreciate there’s a policy. Is it the right policy, and one that our attorney created? No, so I can’t vote for this.”