From today’s meeting, the good news is that they will be discussing my proposals* at November’s meeting. The bad news is that they changed the meeting time from 4 PM to 3:30 PM, I’m guessing due to the whining and crying of the 1st Amendment Hater City Attorney, Stacy Kooistra. This from the minutes of September’s meeting;
City Attorney Kooistra reminded the Commission of the process for Public Input and the need for items to be listed on the Agenda for discussion or voting purposes. He stated there may be a need to reschedule future meetings to earlier in the day to allow for additional time.
No mention of how I cut him off during public input by saying they couldn’t ask me questions.
During open discussion at the end of today’s meeting they discussed the change (I love how they must have dress rehearsal before the meeting to make sure they can slip this stuff in and make it look legit). Commissioner Carl Zylstra mentions he went and tried to find a meeting longer then last month’s meeting of 1 hour 30 minutes and he could only find one longer in July of 2019 which lasted 1 hour 48 minutes. They quickly moved into a discussion about moving the meetings to 3:30 PM so that they could have more time to discuss items before 5 PM which city attorney Kooistra argued was the time staff needed to leave (there is NOTHING in the Charter requiring boards to adhere to staffers work schedules, if I am wrong, please notate in the comments section and I will update).
Only Commissioner Anne Hajek (partially) objected and said that the later time is to better serve the public (attending). But it fell on deaf ears as they all agreed to have November’s meeting at 3:30 PM so staff could leave at 5 PM.
As I have argued these public meetings are for the PUBLIC, NOT the city staff and I was extremely disappointed in the CRC for caving to the whims of the city attorney and his ignorant objections to long meetings.
This is also contributing to the constant destruction of open and transparent government by this administration and his hitmen. Maybe no one participates in city government because the meeting times are inconvenient. Yup. And they continue their madness with this change.
*Commissioner Carl Zylstra suggested my proposal for having city directors have residency within Sioux Falls could be easily inserted into the charter. So I still have hope that at least one of my proposals will make the ballot 🙂
I agree that most of these meetings should be at the best possible time slot to allow for as much public commentary as we can get, however, I believe moving it up to 3:30 is also good as well, giving us additional time to have public discussions on all subject matters, including public commentary at the end.
Remember Scott, the Charter Revision Commission is just one way for you to get ‘amendments’ to the charter on a public ballot; if they do not like your proposal, you could take it to the “public” and hold outside public town halls at least once each quarter leading up to the next election, convincing the residents to sign a petition to support your revision.
So there are two ways in which to hold public meetings. I be in support of your revisions if you wanted to hold outside “town hall forums” considering that we hold 5 a year (1 per each district) to inform the public, ask for suggestions, make changes to your revision, to signing a petition.
I dont know how many of your recommendaitons will make the final roster, but in order to convince them to make your change regarding TIFS – create a formal presentation to present to them at the next meeting during public comments urging them to place on a future meeting agenda. Show them what your revision would look like, would do, and where it could be placed in the charter. I beleive you could make a case to revise Section 5.10 aka Budget Restrictions.
Good Article.
The people’s business is being scheduled to the convenience of bureaucrats. Must be complete by 5 p.m. apparently.
Being sensitive to work/life balance for city employees who might be asked to be available after 5 p.m., is there a comp time policy to allow city employees to track and exchange those hours during the regular workday?
I don’t work for the city, so I cannot tell you in the affirmative, but I have heard there is a comp time exchange that the city clerks regularly take advantage of.