I might be the only one who cares about this . . . until you can’t find the information you need or you find out that you missed an important meeting!
I wrote a blog about how to look up upcoming meetings at the city. (I still have to do the county and school board posts.) In that post back in April I made the following recommendations:
1. Make all meetings “Legistar” meetings.
a. If having access to the Legistar software is a problem, have someone in the clerk’s office that makes agendas for committees that can’t have access to the Legistar system.
b. If training is a problem, have regular quarterly trainings for Legistar users.
2. Put all the “other” meetings back to 2004 in legistar so they become searchable. We have a system, we need to use it.
3. Have someone in the clerk’s office follow up and make sure that there are minutes for all the meetings that have happened.
4. Require committees to have their agendas in by Friday unless they fall under a narrow list of exceptions that are permitted. We need a culture change and a message that this is a strong priority.
Last night I was quite exasperated, and this morning I wrote this email. I also had it sent to the Task Force on the Structure of City Government. Hopefully it might get some responses:
from: Brenda Konkel <brendakonkel@gmail.com>to: All Alders <allalders@cityofmadison.com>,
<mayor@cityofmadison.com>,
“Bottari, Mary” <MBottari@cityofmadison.com>
cc: “Witzel-Behl, Maribeth” <MWitzel-Behl@cityofmadison.com>,
“May, Michael” <mmay@cityofmadison.com>,
“Veldran, Lisa” <lveldran@cityofmadison.com>
date: Aug 19, 2019, 11:36 AM
subject: Will you be the Mayor and Council who does something about this?
As you probably know, for over 10 years now I’ve been blogging about upcoming city meetings. Each week I look at every agenda and pull out the interesting items (skipping over approval of minutes, housekeeping issues and “reports” that have unknown content) I now also blog about upcoming county and school board meetings. And, in the past few years we’ve added me going on WORT every Monday and doing a 7 minute spot on the week ahead. Sadly, and I’m sure the alders who try to give their constituents a heads up on upcoming meetings know, its become harder and harder to have accurate information.
I’m sure you realize how hard it is to find an accurate list of the upcoming meetings for the city. If you look in legistar you’re missing the additional meetings, if you look on the clerks website you get a different list and it might not have everything in legistar. You have to combine the two and then there is still missing information. It’s very confusing.
Here’s a list of issues I encountered in preparing my blog on city meetings
this week:
1. The “notice of possible quorum” agendas are confusing. Sometimes committees incorporate them in their own agendas, other times there is a separate notice that shows up on the clerk’s website. This week the Presidents Work Group on Surveillance has a “notice of possible quorum” listed on the clerk’s website. You have to open it up to see it’s actually the Surveillance committee. Why not just have an agenda for that committee and have the title on the clerk’s website say what committee it is? This is relatively minor, but I hear lots of complaints (mostly from my WORT co-host) about how confusing this is.
2. 5:00 Today there is “Humanitarian Aware Commission, Reverend Dortor Marthin Luther King Jr listed on the clerk’s agenda. When you click on the links to get to the agenda there is nothing there. It is also not in legistar. Are they meeting today or not? I’m assuming not? This is a new and peculiar issue that I’ve rarely seen int he past.
3. Also listed at 5:30 today is the Sister City Collaboration Committee, same problem as the MLK committee. Rare as it is, twice in one week.
4. Wednesday at 10am, when I did my blog the Street Use Staff Committee was in Legistar and not on the clerks agenda. This morning we got a notice of additional meetings sent through the list serve.
5. Wednesday 1:30 Board of Review is in legistar, no agenda, not on the clerk’s agenda and has no agenda. At 11:04 today it was posted
6. Thursday 5:00 Disability Rights Commission in legistar, not on clerk’s agenda and has not agenda. At 8:37 today it was posted
7. Friday 5:00pm Public Market Development Committee is in legistar, has no agenda, not on the clerk’s list.
At this point, I have no confidence that when I look at agendas I actually know which committees are actually meeting. It’s further confusing because the ONLY WAY to find out if the meetings are properly noticed is to go to CCB and look in the hallway outside the clerk’s office. Who has time for that?
Something needs to change. Personally, I think all committees should be in legistar so all their agenda items and attachments are searchable. There shouldn’t be two systems. I know you are looking at the possibility of a new system similar to legistar, will that be a public process? If so when and where will it be discussed? And in the meantime, can you please work to restore confidence in the current system?
Thanks for listening! Be my heroes and fix this please!
Brenda
p.s. YES! I know this is a very complicated issue. I’m probably one of the heaviest users of they system outside of city hall and I’ve been dealing with it since 2003/2004 when I worked with Jean MacCubbin to get the system we have. I know most people blame the software, I think more of the problem is training, protocols and the humans using the software. Since the county uses the same system, I think it is important to keep the systems similar, so its less confusing for the public. And it would be great is if the school board used it too! Again, thanks for listening.
p.p.s I’m in district 2, Alder Heck is my alder, no need to respond Patrick. 🙂 Would love to hear from others!
