Before the mayor started spewing about monsters and his CIP presentation, the city council had a chance to have open discussion at the today’s informational meeting.
The main topic at hand? The supposed secrecy of the operations meetings. Fiscal, land use and public services committee meetings are held in public and recorded at Carnegie Hall, not so much with the operations committee.
Erpenbach, the sorcerer of all excuses dug deep today, by arguing the meetings could be recorded but after 30 seconds they would have to go in to executive session.
Councilors Neitzert (who is on the committee), Starr and Stehly were not buying it. Starr brought up the notes from the previous meeting and asked how talking about rotation of the director’s meeting and changing public input had anything to do with the legal safety of an executive session.
Stehly said she spoke with former Jamison this morning (who used to serve on the committee) and he professed it was simply a house keeping committee that dealt with staff and procedures.
By this point, Michelle’s head was a steaming teapot and Kiley shut down the conversation.
This is about the older councilors controlling the new councilors and posturing. Erpenbach’s argument about their ‘newness’ is beginning to wear thin.
I advised people to vote for Greg, Theresa and Pat because of their readiness to serve. They may have a small learning curve (mostly trying to figure out the games the mayor and his minion councilors are playing) but their knowledge of city government is not up for debate.
They proved that today.
While we are on the topic of public input, I find it interesting they are still trying to fiddle with it. I had heard rumors they were planning changes, and it was confirmed today. Now that it is out in the open, it is time to tamp out those flames. How ironic they would discuss in secret the changes to public input. That’s not irony, that’s tyranny.