The Sioux Falls City Council will be taking input on public input at a working session on Tuesday at 3 PM at Carnegie. You know, when most people will be working. Would have been nice to move the meeting to at least 5 PM. But like most things the council would prefer NOT to have public input, so why would they want public input on public input?
The more I think about it, moving the public input to the back of the meeting could cause some serious unintended consequences. Now with input at the beginning, a lot of the commenters come, say their peace and go home. I could see a scenario where if they had to sit through the meeting a couple of things could happen.
First off, they would see how the sausage is made, which could be a positive or a negative thing depending on the agenda. They may start actually seeing how this council rubberstamps all tax and fee increases and hands out corporate welfare. This actually could make the meetings a lot longer because while waiting for actual public input, citizens could be coming up and commenting on all the agenda items, and it may not be nice, and could be time consuming.
Or, if public input is at the end, they could be upset about a vote the council made earlier in the meeting and let them have it. That could get very ugly.
It’s best just to leave it as is. Give the chair more latitude (per state law) to limit certain speakers and make it a day.