The members of Community Board 7 may have not known it was Sunshine Week when they voted unanimously to recommend that meetings of the committee monitoring the filtration plant construction should be opened to the public. But we can’t think of a better celebration of the week’s principles.

As we’ve reported on this page twice before, Sunshine Week, which began on March 13, was organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to educate Americans about the importance of access to public information and decision-making processes.

Open meetings are a critical component of our democracy, as is an informed citizenry, which does not develop if left in the lobby while its representatives secret themselves away behind closed doors.

While technically, the Facility Monitoring Committee, as the plant construction committee is known, may have been able to legally defend its closed meetings (because it’s a mixed grouping of public officials from various parts of city government, and because it has no decision-making capacity), there is no logic to keeping out the same community members the process is designed to protect.

This construction project has no rival in recent Bronx history. Just for starters, the city will blast a hole the size of Yankee Stadium in the park over an 18-month period. During that time, trucks filled with earth and rock will come and go at the site every two minutes.

The potential for air quality, traffic and noise problems are massive. Our community will benefit from as many vigilant residents from as many different perspectives as possible (time of day, proximity to construction and traffic patterns, those with asthma, etc.) watching the project closely and reporting what they find.

We are not saying that all community residents should be able to speak at will at these meetings – there needs to be time for the city to fully brief the Committee and for members of the Committee to question the city.

But that does not mean that community residents should be kept from absorbing as much information as possible from these meetings and relaying it to their neighbors. We think there should also be a period for public comment at the beginning of each of the sessions, as there is at Community Board meetings. But if residents find that their concerns have not been raised at a particular meeting, they can take it up with staff at the Department of Environmental Protection’s community office on Jerome Avenue or encourage Committee members to raise the issue. 

The meetings aren’t open yet. Board 7 is only one of the three boards on the Committee. Members of the entire Committee must re-open the discussion when they meet again on April 2.

But we believe that Board 7’s wise action will lead the way for Board 8, which was not present at the first meeting, and for Board 12, which was. 

In the meantime, Board 7 members should be proud that, in the fashion of true public servants representing and advocating for their fellow citizens, they voted to let the sunshine in.