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Memo to Mayor Craddock and Members of the city council Dated February 23, 1984 Page 2 of Memo Article 6252-17, commonly known as the Open ~1eeting s Act of Texas, requires that "written notice of the date, hour, place, and subject of each meeting held by governmental bodies shall be given before the meeting...." The Act requires that the notice be "posted on a bulletin board to be located at a place convenient to the public in the City Hall. " The notice is required to be posted at least seventy-two (72) hours before the scheduled meeting, except that "in case of emergency or urgent public necessity, which shall be expressed in the notice, it shall be sufficient if the notice is posted two hours before the meeting is convened" (my emphasis). The Act provides further that items may be added to a meeting agenda if the notice " .. .is posted two hours before the meeting is convened, " if the media are notified of the change in the agenda. Adding agenda items does not require an expresslon of an emergency or urgent public necessity. In this case, the only non-compliance with either the Open Meetings Act or the City Charter is the failure to include in the notice of the time change that the time change was made because of an "emergency or urgent public necessity." The Texas courts, in interpreting the Open Meetings Act, have applied the "substantial compliance rule. " In Stelzer v. Huddleston, 526 S. W . 2 nd 7 10, the Court wrote "the rationale of the substantial compliance rule is that while the notice provisions in statutes are mandatory, they are essentially procedural¡ that rigid adherence to such a procedural mandate will not be required if it is clear that a substantial compliance provides realistic fulfillment of the purpose for which the mandate was incorporated in the statute. " In the instant case, the notice was posted some twenty-eight (28) hours before the meeting convened, members of the news media who had requested notice by telephone were notified, and a notice which included the time change was published in the San Marcos Daily Record on Tuesday, February 7. It appears, then, that the City substantially complied with the requirements of the Act, the only omission being the failure to state in the notice of the time change that an emergency or urgent public necessity required the time change. Making such a. statement in the notice would not have better informed the public of the time change. While the time change was regrettable, under these circumstances, I do not believe that it was an illegal violation of the Open Meetings Act. In this case, there was substantial compliance with the Act.