By John Barrella

Two solar filings on a shared parcel top Tuesday’s agenda. The board’s minutes, and a string of blank agenda lines, raise questions under the state’s Open Meeting Law.

John Barrella – The G.O.A.T. News

CARVER — The Carver Planning Board on Tuesday night resumes its public hearing on a proposed floating solar array with a battery storage system in the town’s Water Resource Protection Overlay District. It will take up that hearing alongside a separate solar company’s request to modify a permit on one of the same parcels.

The board meets at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 29 in Meeting Room #1 at Town Hall. Area 58 TV will record the session for rebroadcast.

The agenda leaves a good deal unsaid, and so does the board’s public record. The town’s website shows minutes for only six of the board’s 16 meetings this year, and none for any meeting since May 26. Tuesday’s agenda lists “Minutes” without saying which meetings are covered.

Two applicants, one parcel

The first voting item is a request from Wareham Street Solar 2, LLC for a “minor modification” to a special permit and site plan review at 0 Wareham Street. The property is Assessor’s Map 134, Lots 4-2A and 4-3, in the Residential-Agricultural district. The agenda does not say what the modification would change. It also does not explain why the change counts as “minor,” a designation that typically allows a board to act without a new public hearing.

Lot 4-3 on Map 134 also appears in the next item. Golden Pond Solar 1, LLC is seeking a special permit and site plan review for “a floating solar array with a utility interconnection and batter energy storage component” at 0 Golden Pond Road and 0 Wareham Street, Map 131, Lot 1-3 and Map 134, Lot 4-3. The agenda repeats the “batter” typo from the board’s Sept. 15 posting. The application is filed under Sections 290-3-6 and 290-3-1.3 of the Carver Zoning Bylaw.

The agenda does not say whether the two companies are related or whether the Wareham Street modification is tied to the floating array. It also does not say how the two projects would share a lot. Those are the first questions residents are likely to raise.

As The G.O.A.T. News reported before the Sept. 15 session, the Golden Pond posting also omits the array’s size, the capacity of the battery system, the company’s principals and the landowner. Tuesday’s agenda adds none of those details. Battery storage has drawn close scrutiny across Plymouth County, and this array would sit on open water inside a district designed to protect the town’s drinking-water supply.

Blank lines on the agenda

Under “Other Business,” the agenda lists five items: Planning Board Member Notes, Town Planner Notes, Discussion, Minutes and Adjournment. Three of them — “Town Planner Notes,” “Discussion” and “Minutes” — are each followed by a dash and nothing else.

“Discussion” with no topic tells the public nothing about what the board plans to discuss. “Minutes” with no dates leaves residents unable to tell which meetings’ records will be approved, and so unable to check them beforehand.

The minutes backlog

The Planning Board has held 16 meetings so far in 2026, according to the town’s online Agenda Center. As of Sept. 25, minutes were posted for six of them: Jan. 13, Feb. 10, March 10, March 24, March 25 and May 26.

No minutes were posted for the other 10: Jan. 27, Feb. 24, April 28, May 12, June 23, July 14, July 28, Aug. 11, Aug. 25 and Sept. 15. That includes every meeting since May 26. The most recent posted minutes are four months old.

The two oldest gaps stand out. The Jan. 27 and Feb. 24 meetings took place eight and seven months ago, and the board has met at least a dozen times since then. The Sept. 15 agenda did list May 12, Aug. 11 and Aug. 25 minutes for approval. Even if the board approved them that night, none had appeared online 10 days later.

The website raises one more question. The listing for the April 28 meeting shows its agenda as “Posted Sep 22, 2026 10:44 AM,” nearly five months after the meeting. That timestamp may reflect a late upload rather than a late notice. The Open Meeting Law requires notice to be posted at least 48 hours in advance, excluding weekends and legal holidays, by the method the town has designated, typically with the town clerk. Whether the April 28 meeting was properly noticed depends on what was posted, and where, before that date. The town’s website does not say.

Posting minutes online is a courtesy and good practice, but the Open Meeting Law does not require it. A missing file on the website does not by itself mean the minutes do not exist. What the law does require is covered below.

Next door, a different record

Neighboring Middleborough shows what a complete record looks like. Its Planning Board has met 17 times so far in 2026, and its online Agenda Center shows minutes posted for 16 of those meetings, every session from Jan. 6 through Aug. 18.

The only meeting without posted minutes is Sept. 15, 10 days ago. That is well within the state’s deadline, which gives a board until its next three meetings or 30 days, whichever is later. Middleborough’s listings also show each agenda’s posting time, typically four to five days before the meeting.

The two boards keep similar schedules and meet at a similar pace.

The difference is in the paperwork. Middleborough has posted minutes for 94 percent of its meetings this year. Carver has posted minutes for 38 percent, and none for any meeting in the past four months.

What the Open Meeting Law requires

The Massachusetts Open Meeting Law, G.L. c. 30A, §§ 18–25, sets three rules that apply directly here.

Minutes must be created and approved on time. Section 22 requires minutes of every open session to be “created and approved in a timely manner.” The Attorney General’s regulation, 940 CMR 29.11, defines timely as “within the next three public body meetings or within 30 days, whichever is later,” unless the board can show good cause. The Attorney General recommends approving minutes at the very next meeting. By the town’s own meeting list, the board has met at least 12 times since Feb. 24 and seven times since May 12. Unless minutes for those meetings were approved and simply never posted, the delay falls well outside that window, and the board would have to show good cause.

Minutes must be released on request within 10 days — even in draft. Section 22 also provides that minutes of an open session, “if they exist and whether approved or in draft form, shall be made available upon request by any person within 10 days.” A board that has not approved its minutes cannot refuse a request on that ground. If no minutes were ever created for a meeting, that is a separate violation of the same section.

Agenda topics must be specific. Section 20(b) requires a meeting notice to list the topics the chair “reasonably anticipates will be discussed,” and 940 CMR 29.03 requires those topics to be stated with “sufficient specificity to reasonably advise the public of the issues to be discussed.” The chair is responsible for the notice. In Carver, that is Chair Alan Germain. An item reading only “Discussion,” with nothing after it, is unlikely to meet that standard. The “Other Business” heading covers only matters the chair could not reasonably anticipate 48 hours ahead, not topics already known when the agenda was posted.

What the Commonwealth can do

If the Attorney General finds a violation, Section 23 of the Open Meeting Law lists what the office may order. It can compel immediate and future compliance, require board members to attend Open Meeting Law training, and order that “minutes, records or other materials be made public.” It can nullify, in whole or in part, any action taken at a meeting held in violation of the law, and it can “prescribe other appropriate action.”

Before choosing a remedy, the Attorney General must decide whether a violation was intentional or unintentional. For an intentional violation, meaning one committed knowingly, the law allows a civil penalty of up to $1,000 for each violation. The penalty is imposed on the public body itself, so a fine against the Planning Board would be paid by the Town of Carver and its taxpayers, not by individual members.

For missing or late minutes, the usual outcome is an order to create, approve and release them, often paired with training. A board that keeps missing deadlines after being told what the law requires risks having later lapses found intentional, and fined.

The Attorney General is not the only enforcer. Under the same section, the Attorney General or any three registered voters may sue in Plymouth County Superior Court to enforce the law, and the court has the same remedies available.

What residents can do

Anyone who believes the board has violated the law can file a complaint on the Attorney General’s Open Meeting Law complaint form within 30 days of the alleged violation. If the violation was not public, the 30 days run from when it reasonably could have been discovered. The complaint goes first to the board, which has 14 business days to respond. If the response is unsatisfactory, the complainant may bring the matter to the Attorney General’s Division of Open Government 30 days after filing.

Residents who want the missing minutes do not have to wait for the website. A written request to the Planning Department triggers the 10-day clock under Section 22.

The board’s future meeting dates are Oct. 13, Oct. 27 and Nov. 10. Its agendas and the list of applications under review are posted on the town website.

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Sources:

• “The G.O.A.T. News reported before the Sept. 15 session”: https://thegoatnewsinmiddleborough.com/2026/09/15/carver-planning-board-weighs-floating-solar-array-in-water-protection-district/
• “online Agenda Center” (in the Middleborough section): https://www.middleboroughma.gov/AgendaCenter/Planning-Commission-5
• “Massachusetts Open Meeting Law”: https://www.mass.gov/the-open-meeting-law
• “regulation, 940 CMR 29.11”: https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/massachusetts/940-CMR-29-11
• “Section 23 of the Open Meeting Law”: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleIII/Chapter30A/Section23
• “agendas and the list of applications under review”: https://www.carverma.gov/planning-board