Town Hall Meetings and Workshops
1st Monday Town Hall Meeting
2nd Monday Regular Scheduled City Council Meeting
3rd Monday Workshop Meeting
4th Monday Regular Scheduled City Council Meeting
What is the purpose of the Town Hall Meeting? Don't we already have time allotted to address our elected officials during the regularly scheduled city council meeting? Perhaps Schneider wishes to eliminate citizens' comments and defer them to the Town Hall Meeting.
I also thought that the purpose of Workshop Meetings was to hash out and debate the pros and cons of various bills, so that the actual city council meeting runs more smoothly. If you only "workshop" once, will everything for the next TWO meetings be brought out in ONE workshop?
This is concerning only because of events at the last meeting. Two bills seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Now if Paul and Stuckey were still on the board, these would have passed and we would later ask what they were about and received an "I don't know." Wisely, the council moved to table the bills to be discussed at a workshop. I just see more of these shenanigans if we only have one "workshop" for every other council meeting. Regardless of how good a bill may (or may not) be, this is just a waste of everyone's time.
Likewise, if citizens comments are being eliminated in favor of a Town Hall Meeting. We may be unable to comment if we do not know exactly what issues will be addressed in the following weeks.
That said, I am open to any means of truly listening to the citizens and getting their valid input. Though, with Schneider, I doubt that this is actually the case.
posted by suzyjax at 12:26 PM
6 Comments:
There is no substitute for good faith. I don't see anything significant coming from Town Hall meetings. The issues facing the City require sound professional policy analysis in order to delineate the options facing our leaders.
Town Hall meetings result in discussions about hypothetical pipes dreams such as swimming pools, free trash, skateboard parks, ward warriors and subsidizing multi-national retailers importing inferior Chinese goods.
Well said.
Where are the real plans for moving the city forward.
With regard to the Suburban Journal Piece "CLOSING THE SALE"
Oscar Wilde-
"There is so much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated it keeps us in touch with ignorance of the community."
I would like to help clear the air here. At the OBA meeting, I asked Mayor-elect Schneider, when he opened the floor to questions, if he was still planning on moving forward with having regular Council Workshop meetings on the 3rd Monday on every month. He said yes.
I then asked him if he would consider holding Town Hall meetings and the like on their first Monday of each month. He seemed to like the idea though he suggested that maybe doing something like that on the weekend would be more effective.
He didn't say that we would have such meetings, he just seemed open to the idea, and I seriously doubt there would be any effort to eliminate Citizen Comments at regular meetings.
The reason to hold town hall meetings (maybe once a quarter, or every other month) is that they generally allow two-way communication. When it comes to resident comments, the rule (though exceptions are made regularly) is that the Council does not respond to questions asked during Residents Comments at Council Meetings. A typical town hall meeting would likely have no such rule.
It's my opinion that we elected Mayor Purzner because the Dody administration failed to engage the public to explain the need to end the "free" trash service. If they had held such a meeting to explain the revenue/funding problems, they surely would have gotten 5+ more people to reconsider that issue.
When it comes to the Council meeting Schedule we need to remember that this is a part time job for our elected officials. There is only so much time they can devote to this (including all the time most of them spend review the "packets" sent to them by the city several times a week).
A schedule seems reasonable to me. The first meeting of the month could focus on unresolved business from the previous month and new business for the workshop could be raised (also if TH meetings were happening any issues raised there could be addressed as needed). Then the Workshop follows where the Council could hammer out solutions to items raised at the previous meeting. Finally the last Council meeting could be where those solutions are implemented.
That suggests something of a good work flow in my opinion.
Anyone try calling in lieu of a Town Hall Meeting.
Doesn't the BoA have a committee system? Are the workshops supposed to be for working as committee of the whole?
Yes, the workshop system is replacing the bulk of the committees.
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