During the Planning Commission Meeting tonight, a staffer was explaining to the commission what the process is for council approval and she says, “1st Reading will be October 16 and the 2nd reading and PUBLIC HEARING will be . . .”
The 1st reading is also a public hearing where the public can speak up to 3 minutes. This was the compromise the council made when they shoved general public input to the back of the meeting. You can speak on 1st readings and I encourage it.
So essentially this staffer admits they don’t tell people about the 1st reading being a PUBLIC HEARING.
I think it will take the city council to pass an ordinance to get these folks to KNOCK IT OFF! You need to tell constituents that they can speak at the 1st reading and STOP with your closed government BULLSH!T!
It is obvious that there is a directive from the top permitting planning staff to mislead the public, and I am not talking about the Planning Director.
Last night at the meeting during public input I addressed the transparency issue with the council (FF: 2:55:00)
3 minutes on 1st Reading: It ain’t Europe on $25 a day, but it might just have to do. Sometimes quickies are good. But if you speak at the 1st Reading, then can you speak at the end of that council meeting, too, on the same issue, or is it already an “old” issue which bars you further discussion? Or, would it be better to forgo the quickie and get into some real action at the end of a council meeting, that was the 1st Reading meeting, which would then find you sandwiched in between the 1st and 2nd Readings or council meetings?…. Wow, talk about a threesome and sandwiched, and only 3 minutes?….. Frankly my friends part of transparency is making things easy and we all know finding something easy makes a quickie a lot easier, too…. 😉 ….. #TheyAreDoingItToUsAgain
You can speak as often as you wish to. I mean, You can speak on ALL 2nd Reading which occur first during each meeting, 5 minutes, each, you can speak on every 1st Reading that follows for 3 mins each time, and you can speak on all the Resolutions for 5 mins each time, and come back and speak for 3 minutes during Public Comment, the only catch, during PUBLIC COMMENT, we adopted a rule, which has not been challenged, or overruled, that you can only speak on TOPICS that have NOT been disussed during the agenda items. Rule of thumb, PUBLIC COMMENTARY is to be used to discuss a previous weeks agenda, or future agenda coming in the weeks ahead…
Scott, you do not need an ordinance change to stop city staff from doing what they are doing, you simply file a “legal suit” vs the City (Mayor, Department Head, Officer, Manager, Agent, Employee) of who is breaking State law…If this was done, you could put in the request, to revoke the Charter, if the violation keeps reoccurrign.
Scott, Mike (last paragraph) makes a point. Your blog has logged plenty of evidence. There’s also a history of court actions. The charter makes the mayor (only) fully responsible for constitutional infringement. Once a lawsuit makes this mayor broke nobody will run for the office in the future without a new charter imposed by the SD Supreme Court. I’m ready for the card games in jail when the ‘Bag of Tricks’ has us fingerprinted and in jumpsuits.