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Asked and Answered

Does the 72 hour period for Agenda Amendments include weekends and holidays?

June 14, 2009

Question

For an amended agenda, it seems that the amendments must be made 72 hours before the meeting. Does this 72 hour period include weekends and holidays?

Answer

The Brown Act includes weekends and holidays when computing the 72-hour requirement of section 54954.2.  The language of that section provides that “[a]t least 72 hours before a regular meeting, the legislative body of the local agency, or its designee, shall post an agenda containing a brief general description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed at the meeting including items to be discussed in closed session.”  Nothing in that section or other sections of the Brown Act indicate that holidays or weekends are excluded.

In a 1995 Opinion, Ops. Cal. Atty. Gen. 327, the Attorney General said that the notice period for posting regular meeting notices under the Brown Act includes weekend hours but that the notice must be posted in a freely accessible location — in other words, a notice posted in a building locked during the weekend would probably not satisfy Brown Act requirements.

Asked & Answered posts should not be relied on as legal advice, and FAC makes no guarantees about their completeness or accuracy. All posts carry a date of publication that readers should take note of in assessing their usefulness, given that laws and interpretations of them may change over time. Posts predating Jan. 1, 2023, that discuss the California Public Records Act may contain statute numbers no longer in use. Please see this page for a table showing how the California Public Records Act has been renumbered.