On November November 13, 2023, at 8:30 AM, the Saratoga Springs City Council held a special meeting. The city’s website originally announced this meeting without posting the agenda or the purpose of the meeting. It is unclear when precisely the city posted the agenda, but as far as I can tell, they finally did so on the Saturday before the meeting.

The posted agenda included one item. The item appeared under the Finance Department as “Set Public Hearing: Proposed Amended 2024 Budget.”

I believe the root of the problem was that at the Council’s November 8, 2023, meeting Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi mistakenly agreed to close the public hearing on the city’s budget. This was premature. The budget was still subject to revision as it had not been adopted, so the public should have been able to continue to review and comment on the changes.

This error required that the city convene the special meeting in order to “set” a public hearing for November 28, 2023, the date of the next Council meeting. At the November 13 meeting, Commissioner Minita Sanghvi apologized to the other Council members for her error that necessitated this special meeting.

Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran was heard at the end of the meeting on a hot microphone observing that “Kaufmann will be writing about this.”