AMHERST — Two complaints under the state’s Open Meeting Law, filed against the Town Council following its adoption of a resolution supporting a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, will be addressed at a special session Wednesday.

The agenda for the Town Council meeting, being held in a virtual format starting at 6:30 p.m., includes two action items, specifically to respond to the complaints brought by Amherst couple Lonna Steinberg and Mike Offner.

Councilors on March 4 voted 9-3, with one abstention, to adopt the cease-fire resolution at the end of a five-hour meeting, one that had been interrupted by shouts from the public following the insertion of amendments that prompted the sponsors to pull their support. The amendments, which cast blame on Hamas and appeared to lighten the criticism toward Israel, were later removed, bringing the resolution back to the table for a vote.

Steinberg’s complaint contends that Council President Lynn Griesemer adjourned the meeting and that the vote on the resolution after this should be nullified.

“Since this was a new meeting and the first meeting had been adjourned, Open Meeting Law requires 48-hour notice of the new meeting,” Steinberg wrote in her complaint. “There was not notice of this meeting.”

In the complaint, Steinberg also observes that some in the audience had departed and that others addressed the public body without permission of the president, creating a disruption.

“There were many occasions when persons addressed the meeting without permission. People disrupted the meeting,” Steinberg wrote.

Offner, who had addressed the Town Council by calling the resolution a “tyranny of the majority and highly divisive,” brought a similar complaint. He wrote that Griesemer had banged the gavel at least once to adjourn the meeting.

“The Council went through various iterations of unorganized and chaotic deliberation and then ended up voting in the affirmative on a resolution. I believe that this deliberation and vote, after Chair Griesemer declared the meeting adjourned, constituted a subsequent, independent meeting for which no public notice was provided, and therefore in violation of the Open Meeting Law.”

Like Steinberg, he is asking that the meeting be declared adjourned and that the vote be declared be null and void. But he also asks the Town Council to go a step farther: “I would like the Council to issue a formal and public apology to the community for these events, for failure to have the police stop the angry mob from intimidating the Council and for continuing deliberation and holding a vote after the chair declared the meeting adjourned.”

The council’s rules of procedure, revised in September 2021, allow for the “presiding officer” to adjourn or recess, without a vote, in cases where those present “conduct themselves in manner that disturbs or impedes the orderly procedure of the meeting.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.