Here’s 10 things city hall could change that I witnessed in less than 2 hours! Good grief. I was interested in going to three different meetings yesterday. Government officials and committee members are wondering how to get more people to participate in local government – based on my experiences yesterday, I can name a few.
I had been working 60 hours a week at work and not going to a lot of meetings, but now I have all the free time in the world so I thought I’d get caught up on a bunch of issues and start blogging and videotaping again. Cuz I’m bored. So, yesterday I began! In the new municipal building, with a new website for citichannel and a bunch of the same old problems. So, here’s my advice – things you can change without any structural changes, but that will make “the public” feel more welcome and make it easier for them to attend! Here we go, the airing of grievances – only part 1, I’m sure.
BE TRANSPARENT IN NAMING THINGS!
The public needs to understand what you are talking about.
Jargon. Good grief. I went to the “Integrated Pest Management” meeting yesterday. Does anyone know what that committee is talking about? It’s about the use of chemicals to control weeds and insects and rodents. Poisons they dump into our environment. Now, I’m not suggesting they call this the Poison Committee or anything, but “Integrated Pest Management” is inside lingo that most people aren’t going to understand at first glance. Sure, you can figure it out, but we shouldn’t have to.
Legistar, Internets. If, you wanted to know more and you found the committee in legistar and wanted to get a description of the committee – this is all you would find. No meeting time, no location, no contact information, no description. Just those same words “integrated pest management”. Is this about geese? Or beavers? Is that included?
Acronyms. This committee had three items on their agenda – which leads to another pet peeve of mine. Check out the items.
- Updates – Survey of Current IPM Practices
- Updates – IPM-PRTF Project Charter
- Presentation: Parks Division – Integrated Pest Management Approach, Review of IPM Reports and Plans
IPM-PRTF – honestly, I was in the meeting and I’m not sure I don’t know if they did that or not. I was there! They took things out of order because of people having to leave so I might have been confused. It might have been when they talked about the committee deadlines and tasks and filling out the statement of interest forms. If it wasn’t, then they talked about things not on the agenda.
MEETINGS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY
I don’t think meetings should be scheduled at times like 10am or 2pm. Yesterday I went to a meeting at 3pm. The only people who can show up to these meetings are city staff, people paid to be there (lobbyists), retired people and let’s face it, privileged people or people with super flexible jobs (management). In fact, there were three members of the public there. One retired and used to work for the parks department, one who has a nonprofit interested in these issues and me – privileged enough to not be in a complete rush to get a new job.
FACILITIES
Spoiler alert – if you were on my instagram, twitter or facebook yesterday, you’ll know what’s coming next!
Let’s talk about this door.
I got to the meeting first, I was coming from a 2:00 meeting and I was early. I got to the room and I put my hand on the door to see if it was unlocked. But I heard voices . . . so I stopped. Next person arrives, says to me, let’s go in. I explain I think there is still another meeting in there. Next person shows up, walks into the room and confirms, there is a meeting in there. A city staff person comes by and see people standing (I’ll get to that in a moment) and tries to be helpful and swipes their card to unlock the door, but we explain that there are people in there. Another person comes and walks in, interrupting the meeting again. By this point, there are about 8 people and everyone warns others not to the the same. There’s gotta be some way to let people know that there is a meeting going on in that room given modern technology. But also, if you are a member of the public going to that meeting, how comfortable are you going to be going into a room where the door is closed. It feels like you’re in the wrong spot.
Seating.
Yeah, that ol’ problem. I was 20 minutes early, so I wandered around looking at the remodeled building, checking out what the rooms on that floor were being used for, etc. Eventually I thought I’d grab a place to sit. Do I sit on the floor? On the steps at the top of the stairs blocking access? Just stand? Why are there no chairs?
Someone asked me, where are the benches that used to be there? Why, they are in this room labeled “Staff Only” – I presume they are safely locked up in here.
Not designed to have public attend. At the meeting I was attending there were no chairs for the public to sit in. When I got there, I pulled a chair from the table. They eventually ran out of chairs, and one member of the public was forced to sit on the window sill/heating and cooling system.
Hard to hear/distracting sounds. I posted my annoyance about how there was going to be hissing in my audio due to the heating system. Others on facebook chimed in that when they attended meetings on the first it is really hard to hear. In this room I was just annoyed because if I post my audio its going to be crap or I’m going to have to edit it – and it was just annoying. These exposed ceilings might (or might not) look nice, but they are not functional.
CLOSED SESSION MEETINGS SHOULD BE EXPLAINED BETTER
I’m so annoyed. The finance committee where they were talking about Judge Doyle Square was noticed to go into closed session and there was only one agenda item. I was going to attend if I could work it out, but I ran into a staff person in the hallway and they told me that it was going into closed session and citichannel was told not to both videoing it because it would be in closed session. IT. WAS. NOT. It was held in open session, not videoed and members of the public who might have attended didn’t. Grrr. I’m not blaming the staff person who shared information with me here, I’m blaming the people who told the staff person not to worry about it.
NEW CITICHANNEL SITE
So, this one might just be me, but the new website for citichannel . . . uh, I’m just confused. All I want to see is what meetings they plan to have on live-streamed and which ones are not so I knew which meetings to prioritize attending in person. For instance, like yesterday, when they weren’t live-streaming the Finance Committee, which they usually do. Where do I look to find that out? Funny thing is, I asked the citichannel guy (that’s a technical term – not using his name to protect the innocent), and he didn’t know either. And when I asked an alder, they said “oh, they can just turn the cameras on”. Well, except when they were told not to bother even looking. Sigh.
10 simple things, that can be changed in the next week, to make it easier for public attending meetings. You don’t need a committee for this stuff.
