I appreciate Councilmember Robinson's actions to try and make council meetings more productive and efficient. I look forward to hearing other comments about his proposal tonight. They may inform and influence my opinion. At this point, I feel that the changes seem to complicate the current policies and won't address the concerns that I have seen as an observer of your meetings. Significant improvement has been made in the tone and content of the meetings in the last few years. Please consider these respectful nonlegislative suggestions that could further facilitate your meetings.
1. Attentively listen to each other with the desire to understand and find common ground, not to find details to pick apart.
2. Ask clarifying questions to determine if you understand the speaker's intent and content before making your comments.
3. If you agree with a comment, state you agree. It is not necessary to take valuable time to repeat it.
4. Use a device to track the time spent on your comments. Time is a valuable resource. Citizens are given three minutes. Sometimes complex issues may require you to use more than that. Awareness of the time you take will help you stick to the main points of the topic. Please keep in mind that if seven of you address an issue for three minutes, that is 21 minutes that each of your constituents has given the council.
5. Put citizen comments and voting issues that allow citizen comment just after the council member, mayor, and CAO reports. While many of us would like to listen to the entire meeting, circumstances may not permit us to do so. I don't have access to the number of participants watching the meeting, but it would be interesting to know how many need to leave the meeting to take care of children, chores, etc. before they have the opportunity to share their opinions. The things that have been suggested to be in your work sessions can be later in the agenda unless they address an item to be voted upon during that meeting.
6. Since some of you are running for mayor, please do not use council meetings as a forum for campaign debate or to gain ground among the voters. Campaign outside of the meeting by stating what you will do for the city and how you will accomplish it. Run FOR the office and not AGAINST the other candidates.
Generally, I believe the council should be in charge of their operations, but I have two notes:
1) I suggest a time limit of 2 or 3 minutes per council member during council member business. This applies to their items, and each comment on items of another. Additional time may be granted by a majority vote of the council if they want to dig a little deeper. (This is a reflection of what was a controversial item at the meeting on 2/23.)
2) Since the Consent Agenda is a voting item, public comment should be called for. I am thinking someone may find an error in the minutes and not had the time to email council office about it.
I appreciate Councilmember Robinson's actions to try and make council meetings more productive and efficient. I look forward to hearing other comments about his proposal tonight. They may inform and influence my opinion. At this point, I feel that the changes seem to complicate the current policies and won't address the concerns that I have seen as an observer of your meetings. Significant improvement has been made in the tone and content of the meetings in the last few years. Please consider these respectful nonlegislative suggestions that could further facilitate your meetings.
1. Attentively listen to each other with the desire to understand and find common ground, not to find details to pick apart.
2. Ask clarifying questions to determine if you understand the speaker's intent and content before making your comments.
3. If you agree with a comment, state you agree. It is not necessary to take valuable time to repeat it.
4. Use a device to track the time spent on your comments. Time is a valuable resource. Citizens are given three minutes. Sometimes complex issues may require you to use more than that. Awareness of the time you take will help you stick to the main points of the topic. Please keep in mind that if seven of you address an issue for three minutes, that is 21 minutes that each of your constituents has given the council.
5. Put citizen comments and voting issues that allow citizen comment just after the council member, mayor, and CAO reports. While many of us would like to listen to the entire meeting, circumstances may not permit us to do so. I don't have access to the number of participants watching the meeting, but it would be interesting to know how many need to leave the meeting to take care of children, chores, etc. before they have the opportunity to share their opinions. The things that have been suggested to be in your work sessions can be later in the agenda unless they address an item to be voted upon during that meeting.
6. Since some of you are running for mayor, please do not use council meetings as a forum for campaign debate or to gain ground among the voters. Campaign outside of the meeting by stating what you will do for the city and how you will accomplish it. Run FOR the office and not AGAINST the other candidates.
Generally, I believe the council should be in charge of their operations, but I have two notes:
1) I suggest a time limit of 2 or 3 minutes per council member during council member business. This applies to their items, and each comment on items of another. Additional time may be granted by a majority vote of the council if they want to dig a little deeper. (This is a reflection of what was a controversial item at the meeting on 2/23.)
2) Since the Consent Agenda is a voting item, public comment should be called for. I am thinking someone may find an error in the minutes and not had the time to email council office about it.