Planning and Development Regular Meeting
City Council
Venue: Council Chambers
Monday, October 22, 2012
The city council planned a meeting to discuss the city’s planning and development issues in the early month of October. It was held at the Council chambers and was scheduled to start at 7:15 pm. After a tending the meeting I learnt that several planning aspect had to be carefully discussed and highlighted for them to be successful. It came to light that cooperation of all departments beginning with designs, finances and city beneficiaries had to be in harmony before any planning and development actions can be made. Therefore by the first ten minutes of the city council’s planning meeting it was clear that administration and public works has to work together with planning and development committee.
Meeting structure
The meeting went smoothly from the beginning according to my observation, this is because it started exactly the time planned or started. Actually by twenty minutes into the scheduled starting time most guests had actually settled and were all ready to receive and hear the main speaker how was the mayor. The meeting began with a roll call from Alderman Tendam who wanted to take note of all the people attending the meeting, he also give a few apologies of the key city council members who had not attended. Though some members already had program sheets that explained the order of business, Alderman after the roll call requested that all the members present who did not have the sheet to be given. It is at this moment that I also gained access to the program sheet and took note of the detailed analysis of the meeting agenda. Towards the end of this city council meeting I realized that the meeting had actually gone as stated in the program and very little improvement could have been made. In fact, the only improvement that the meeting needed was on the time allocated for comments by citizens.
Meeting attendance
The meeting was attended by the city Mayor, City Manager, City Clerk, city council secretary (Alderman Tendam) and Citizens. All the members that attended had a major role to play, considering this meeting was a planning and development meeting most members were expected to contribute their ideas and responses to the issues raised. The mayor began the meeting with a bang after reading a proclamation of the success of the Bakery and Party shop that the council had started a few months ago. He also stated that the shop was still working on the pension issue but it finances were good and it was actually making profit. The mayor seemed to have brought life to the meeting; this is because the house was too quite after Alderman a had spoken. Alderman the council secretary had taken too much confirming the quorum by reading the roll call. After the mayor had spoken he invited the City Manager Ms. Suzette Robinson to give the public announcements. She is also the Director of Public Works and spoke of recent awards that the council had received. She pointed out that the council had received a “Bike Friendly Community Award” from League of American Bicyclist. She concluded her announcements by stating that all the recent awards were available in the council’s website and then invited City Clerk to provide communications information. The clerk was quite audible and gave an authoritative speech on how voting would be carried out towards the end of the meeting. He stated that since we could also all see the topics for discussion from our program sheets that were already provided, the meeting will mainly focus on those topics and any member including the citizens will be given an opportunity to voice their comments.
Agenda outcomes
After all the announcements and communication channels had been presented, those that had taken the designated participation sheets. The participation sheets had been issued to all who wanted to contribute to the topic in the agenda list. This provided a chance for the city council to give their presentations on the topics and also for the citizens to give their views on the contemporary issues. The first issue discussed was on the amending the approved planned development at Chicago Avenue. The city staff wanted the rest of the council and the citizens to approve the designed ordinance of the amending of the avenue that was adopted in may. The council staff wanted that the avenue to be improved to include Walgreen. The main aim of this planning strategy was to open up the other neighboring street to the main avenue. After several discussions on the issue relating to the finances required, reasons for the development and duration required. The team approved the avenue suggested planning details and decided that the avenue will be improved and all finances will be attained from the city councils developmental account. The second issue discussed was the amendment of the city code and civil service commission rules. The staff requested ordinance 62-0-12 to be approved, the ordinance provides review of Title 2 chapter 3 of the City Code. The ordinance suggests that the chapter to be revised by improving fire department hiring process, increasing role of commissioners associated new police officers and finally addressing the major human resources departments. This debate provided evidence that the city planning projects required excellent human resource to be successful. Ensuring the qualified employees were utilized the city council would actually be more efficient and successful. In conclusion, the city council’s meeting was a big success because it was not only orderly but also the issues raised were or great benefit to the city’s developmental plans.
