Time for City Council business
While City Council members might need to meet more often in public to accomplish an ambitious agenda of municipal business, the community certainly will benefit from their decision to meet less often in private.
First, let’s look at the need for more meeting time, especially since sessions, starting at 5:30 p.m. for closed-door deliberations, sometimes stretch past the midnight hour, with about half of scheduled matters covered.
Lengthier meetings are due to the three most recently seated members—John Anderson, Jan Horton and Hank Wedaa—individually or in pairs adding items to the agenda, including important issues sometimes ignored by the past council.
Mayor Allen Castellano wisely allows the practice, rather than keeping the agenda structure in his own hands or requiring majority concurrence to add new topics, thus permitting more solution-seeking reflection on community concerns.
But for this open process to continue, council must meet more frequently, perhaps adding one or two study sessions to the current twice-monthly schedule. These gatherings could focus on discussions and presentations and not require staff-written reports.
Surely, more meetings will be needed as council tackles recommendations for Old Town projects from the hard-working Town Center Blue Ribbon Committee.
Second, let’s examine last week’s welcome decision to open all council committee meetings to the public, subject to exceptions allowed by the state’s Brown Act.
Two years of Town Center turmoil can be traced to closed-door decision-making, which involved council, city staff and developers participating in ad hoc committee meetings without public scrutiny.
But beware of meetings held under the guise of “personnel” sessions. For example, goals for the city manager and city attorney should be set in public, while the actual evaluations of the administrators’ actions remain private.
A FINAL NOTE
Two controversial city outlays—$99,000 to hire facilitators for the Town Center Blue Ribbon Committee and about $140,000 to pay for a special City Council ballot—proved to be sound expenditures.
The facilitator focused the blue-ribbon body on its core mission, enabling the 24-member group to meet an 18-month timeline for delivering recommendations for the city’s sleepy Old Town area to the council in December or January.
The June 5 election expense—some $20,000 less than estimated—allowed voters to choose a fifth council member, rather than a selection coming from a flawed method that included closed-door deliberations by a two-member council committee.
First, let’s look at the need for more meeting time, especially since sessions, starting at 5:30 p.m. for closed-door deliberations, sometimes stretch past the midnight hour, with about half of scheduled matters covered.
Lengthier meetings are due to the three most recently seated members—John Anderson, Jan Horton and Hank Wedaa—individually or in pairs adding items to the agenda, including important issues sometimes ignored by the past council.
Mayor Allen Castellano wisely allows the practice, rather than keeping the agenda structure in his own hands or requiring majority concurrence to add new topics, thus permitting more solution-seeking reflection on community concerns.
But for this open process to continue, council must meet more frequently, perhaps adding one or two study sessions to the current twice-monthly schedule. These gatherings could focus on discussions and presentations and not require staff-written reports.
Surely, more meetings will be needed as council tackles recommendations for Old Town projects from the hard-working Town Center Blue Ribbon Committee.
Second, let’s examine last week’s welcome decision to open all council committee meetings to the public, subject to exceptions allowed by the state’s Brown Act.
Two years of Town Center turmoil can be traced to closed-door decision-making, which involved council, city staff and developers participating in ad hoc committee meetings without public scrutiny.
But beware of meetings held under the guise of “personnel” sessions. For example, goals for the city manager and city attorney should be set in public, while the actual evaluations of the administrators’ actions remain private.
A FINAL NOTE
Two controversial city outlays—$99,000 to hire facilitators for the Town Center Blue Ribbon Committee and about $140,000 to pay for a special City Council ballot—proved to be sound expenditures.
The facilitator focused the blue-ribbon body on its core mission, enabling the 24-member group to meet an 18-month timeline for delivering recommendations for the city’s sleepy Old Town area to the council in December or January.
The June 5 election expense—some $20,000 less than estimated—allowed voters to choose a fifth council member, rather than a selection coming from a flawed method that included closed-door deliberations by a two-member council committee.
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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