Last week, we tried to cover a meeting of the Kingsbridge Armory Task Force, held at the office of Community Board 7. We were told that the state Open Meetings Law did not apply because the task force only makes recommendations and is not an official government body.

This is technically correct and we also understand that people sometimes feel more comfortable offering unvarnished opinions if they can do so without the press in the room.

The problem is that, too often, decisions get made in advance at these kinds of things without public scrutiny or even awareness. Then the formal “public review process” becomes a sham, a lesson in theater or both.

We hesitate to bring up disagreeable memories, but are compelled to do so by an overwhelming desire not to see history repeated. The deal to put the Croton Water Filtration Plant in the Bronx was made, literally, in the back room of a political organization. The deal to put Yankee Stadium in a park was made somewhere before any public process began, including a middle-of-the-night vote of the state legislature to alienate the parkland.

The Gateway Mall development was sealed by the transfer of an existing lease of city property from one private party to another. We could go on.

We are not naïve. There is always some amount of preliminary discussion and parameter-setting on public decisions by stakeholders. But the public review process has to mean something.

We urge all those involved in the Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment project to let the public know what their thinking is before the ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Process) begins. And we’d like the stakeholders involved in the negotiations to remember that erring on the side of providing more sunshine to the public via open meetings, even where it is not legally required, goes a long way toward preventing major civic headaches down the road.

(Disclosure: Mosholu Preservation Corporation, the publisher of the Norwood News, is working on a project to clean the streets on Kingsbridge Road. MPC thinks funding should come from the armory development to provide supplemental sanitation and other services to existing businesses in the area.)