WCC board discontinues pre-meeting dinner 

Meals were longtime tradition at monthly meetings

The WCC Board of Trustees are shown in the ML building at their Jan. 28, 2025 meeting. The public can make comments by contacting the Board of Trustees on the WCC website through a form. Courtney Prielipp | The Washtenaw Voice 

Lily Cole | Editor 

The long-standing, but little-known practice of a pre-meeting meal before the monthly WCC board of trustee meetings has been discontinued. The change follows the Voice’s inquiry into this practice. 

Before she was elected, Trustee Eileen Peck raised concerns to the Voice about the dinners. The Voice then inquired and confirmed independently with Trustee Dave Devarti. Devarti said these dinners are small, legitimate and inexpensive social gatherings. 

Vanessa Brooks, WCC’s chief of staff, who started working with the board of trustees in 2015, confirmed the tradition would be discontinued because it’s more convenient for working executives and staff to grab something quickly. 

“From my understanding it’s been different ways depending on the staff and what their preference is for the meals because they’re informal conversations, just a time for people to get a bite to eat,” Brooks said. 

As of now, dinners before board meetings are not taking place. 

Under Michigan and most open meeting laws, any time there is a majority or quorum of members of an elected body in place, it is required to be an open meeting; these dinners have not been. 

The Voice asked the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), and Jonathan Falk, a representative for SPLC, said it depends on the content being discussed. 

“If they were using that time during the dinners to discuss board business, without that oversight, without that accessibility or accountability that’s written into the law, then that could be a problem,” Falk said. 

Trustees and representatives of the board confirmed that these meals were social gatherings and board business is not discussed. 

Richard Landau, a former WCC trustee from 2001-2023, said the dinners have been going on for as long as he was on the board. The official start date of these dinners is unclear. Brooks said the dinners have happened for as long as she’s been in her position.

Landau, who is also an attorney, has represented public boards such as school boards, community college boards, university boards and city councils, and said he is not familiar with a public board that didn’t have a pre-meeting meal. However, Falk said he isn’t “privy to a situation where there’s a dinner before every meeting … But it doesn’t mean that it’s beyond the pale.”

According to Brooks, conversations at these dinners can range from personal topics like family to achievements. It’s worth noting that the dinners are for staff, with board members being invited, but not necessarily eating. The public is not invited to meals before the meetings. 

Falk said that Michigan law requires public notice for board business discussion, but social gatherings are acceptable. Dinners aren’t usually advertised to the public because they are sometimes social opportunities for board members to get to know each other. 

The budget for these dinners comes from the Board Management Budget. While budgets vary from board to board, Falk said a Board Management Budget could be used for a retreat or a training session for board members. 

The cost per head is about $15 to $20, according to Brooks. The Voice requested a copy of the Board Management Budget from Brooks, but has not yet received a copy.

Past gatherings 

Gatherings outside the official WCC board table have previously been questioned. According to reporting by the Ann Arbor Chronicle, in 2010, WCC president Larry Whitworth and board members at the time attended a two-day retreat at the Westin Book Cadillac hotel in Detroit, at a total cost of $9,910.70, including dinner at the hotel’s 24grille restaurant and $5,887.43 in hotel charges. 

The Ann Arbor Chronicle reports, Whitworth took full responsibility for $4,000 spent by the college on a dinner. He personally reimbursed the college for the dinner with a $4,024 check. Whitworth missed a detail on the menu that 24grille faxed him before the retreat, because the cost of the bill was much higher than anticipated. Specifically, he didn’t read the fine print stating that the restaurant would charge $100 per person for the meal, not including tax and gratuity. Whitworth said to the Chronicle he expected to pay about $2,000 and was shocked when he saw the bill.

Editor’s note: On March 18, 2025, the photo caption of this article was updated to describe the trustees sitting at their Jan. 28, 2025 board meeting.

Editor’s note: On March 18, 2025, the word “forum” was changed to “quorum” to reflect the intended meaning of the sentence.

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