I don’t know if you listened to Sue Roust’s presentation at the informational last Monday, but I thought she talked about a couple of interesting topics.
1) The spreadsheet on public input, &
2) that the CVB (convention visitors) had received an RFP (request for proposal) to host the International Institute of Municipal Clerks Conference in 2016 (see January 30, 2012 Informational meeting).
Our City Clerk’s office had met with the CVB and decided that because May 2016 is, “a busy time with elections and new Council members taking office.” that they would not pursue this invitation from IIMC.
Sue Roust, City Clerk, says, Â “There was a consensus that an even-numbered year was not very good, but that we would watch and see if the RFP comes around for 2017. That might be something worth looking at further.”
As a taxpayer, I was sitting there thinking, “Huh?!” We are most likely going to be asked to subsidize this monstrosity of an Events Center Complex (remember all three facilities: Arena, Convention Center, Events Center) are now going to be considered as one, and we have now TURNED DOWN an invitation to bid on a very high profile conference?! As everyone knows, Mike and his team sold the EC to the voters based on convention business being the MAJOR TENANT!
City Director Mike Cooper was asked if he had been aware of this, and his answer was NO. At the very least, there appears to be a HUGE disconnect and lack of communication going on here.
PART II
A separate issue is the redesign of the City’s website. Would we as citizens have access to the same amount of information as we have had in the past, or would this be an attempt to limit information? Unfortunately, it may prove to be the latter. If you have attended Park Board meetings on a regular basis for the past 4-1/2 years, often times, you can go on to the city’s website to view the minutes from past meetings. If you try to do this recently, you find that instead of the past three years being available that there now was only the previous month’s minutes.
The Director of Parks and Rec said the city is in the process of redesigning the website and that it will be rolled out in the next couple of weeks.
If you look at both the Board of Historic Preservation and the Public Parking Advisory Board’s minutes they both still show three years worth of past meeting minutes (they are both examples of the amount of information that should be available vs. the “new look” of the Park Board minutes).
Be on the lookout for missing info on the newly redesigned website.
I’m not familiar with the clerks association, but, I am very familiar with its counterpart for Finance Officers, having attended, sponsored and worked on GFOA’s national meeting in Mpls. The organization relies very heavily on the local official to plan, seek sponsors, arrange speakers, host and basically ramrod the whole show.
If that’s the case here, as I suspect it is, I could see why our 1 person temporary clerks office would want to take a pass. Sue has been active in all these organizations, I’ll trust her judgment.
We won’t need conventions when all the state are played here.
MHS – I kinda got that feeling also. But, you do have to realize there is going to be a lot of conventions that are going to want incentives to come to Sux Falls. We will be subsidizing this place until the cows come home.