No minutes since March 2026. We asked why on 9/24 — no response. We asked again after the 9/28 meeting — and got only questions back.
SALEM — While reporting on Salem City Council’s recent budget fight with the state, The News of Salem County tried to do what any newsroom does with an official’s on-record account of a vote: check it against the meeting minutes. We couldn’t. The city hasn’t posted a single set of council minutes — regular, caucus or special — since March 9, 2026.
That’s not a gap of a couple of weeks. It’s been more than six months, and when this outlet asked City Hall about it directly, the answers didn’t add up to an explanation.
The Gap in the Official Record
The city’s official minutes-and-agendas page shows the following 2026 meetings with an agenda posted but no minutes: April 13, April 27 and May 11 (caucus meetings), June 8 and June 22, July 22, August 17, September 14 (caucus), and the September 21 special meeting. That’s nine meetings — including the meeting where council voted down the state-mandated budget amendment, and the meeting where it adopted three ordinances, one authorizing the sale of 14 city-owned lots to a single redeveloper for $1 apiece.
The last set of minutes the city actually posted covers a March 9 caucus meeting. Before that, the record is more complete: minutes for the February 9 caucus and the February 23 regular meeting are up, and residents can trace council’s actions back through most of 2025 without major gaps — until late last year.
Municipal Outreach and Deflections
This outlet first raised the missing minutes with City Hall on Sept. 24, emailing Mayor Jody Veler and City Administrator Ben Angeli directly: where, specifically, could 2026 minutes be found online, given that none appeared on the city’s website. That email included a screenshot of the site and noted our understanding that state law requires municipalities to make minutes publicly available. City Hall replied the same day to a separate, unrelated press inquiry — but five days later, the question about the minutes still had not been answered.
We raised it again Sept. 28, this time with Councilwoman Sharen Cline, in the course of following up on her outstanding responses to our questions about the budget vote. Cline’s reply did not point to a URL or a posting date. Instead, she asked: “What is the latest date that you observed being posted? All minutes have been approved by Council.”
Asked directly where residents could find those approved minutes online, Cline responded by repeating the question back: “I’m asking you what is the last date that you see online?” This outlet supplied a screenshot showing no 2026 minutes posted anywhere on the site as of Sept. 28, and after going back over investigatory logs and organizational stored website activity shows only agendas have been available on their website https://salemcitynj.gov/.
Cline’s statement that “all minutes have been approved by Council” is notable on its own: it indicates the minutes exist, in final, council-adopted form — which would rule out the most common explanation for a lag like this (unapproved drafts still working through the process) and raise a narrower question this outlet has not yet gotten answered: if the minutes are already approved, why haven’t they been posted?
[PENDING: Response from Ben Angeli, in his capacity as City Clerk — the official responsible for maintaining and publishing the municipal record — on why minutes have not been posted since March 9, when the backlog will be resolved, and whether complete, approved minutes exist for meetings held since then. First requested Sept. 24; not yet answered as of publication.]
[PENDING: Response from Councilwoman Cline on specifically where the “approved” minutes she referenced can be accessed by the public.]
Recurring Transparency Issues
This isn’t the first time. The city’s 2025 postings follow the identical pattern: minutes were kept current through an August 25, 2025 regular meeting, then the page goes agenda-only starting with the November 10, 2025 meeting and stays that way through the end of the year. Minutes resume, in what looks like a catch-up batch, with the February and March 2026 postings — before the page goes dark on minutes again just as abruptly.
In other words, the city appears to fall behind on posting minutes for months at a stretch, then catches up in bursts, rather than posting them on any predictable schedule. As of this writing, Salem residents have had no way to review the official written record of what their council did, said or voted on at any meeting since early March — a stretch that includes a state-mandated tax increase fight, a rejected request for an in-person meeting with the Governor’s office, a fourteen-lot land sale, and a rewrite of the Historic Preservation Commission’s powers.
It also means this outlet’s own background reporting on the city’s recent statements has had to rely on officials’ word, press releases and agendas, because the underlying meeting record hasn’t been available to check them against.
Legal Action and Pending Requests
The News of Salem County has requested comment from City Hall — first on Sept. 24, and again this week — on the scope of the backlog and when residents can expect it to be resolved. We are also filing a request under the state’s Open Public Records Act for copies of the minutes for every 2026 meeting held since March 9, regardless of whether they’ve been posted online, given Cline’s statement that they have already been approved.
** Note from Editor: We will continue to update our audience on this issue as well as the more pressing financial concern of Salem City: its tax base has shrunk by more than $8 million, and under the state formula that governs its “Transitional Aid,” a smaller base means a bigger required tax hike, one that can drastically affect the City’s future.**