You could hear this after
Matt Flumerfelt spoke in the previous post,
but let’s pull it out separately here.
This is Ashley Paulk recommending that people come in and talk
to their commissioners, and he says:
“I’m here every morning.”
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Matt Flumerfelt
compliments the commission on the good reception he’s gotten previously
and objects to the item in the
new rules
about the commission being able to close subjects.
He notes there is always resort to the law, but he hopes
things won’t come to that.
He concludes:
“The road of respect goes both ways.”
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Gretchen Quarterman applauds Chairman Paulk for increasing
the transparency of the government in the last few years,
then says:
I’m concerned that a barrier to dialog is getting higher, rather than lower. When the citizens make the effort to come to a meeting after a long day of work, or maybe they come in the morning when they don’t actually get to talk, it’s important for them to get a chance to be heard.She describes how the Zoning Board of Appeals (on which she is a county appointee) does it:
When you’re done saying stuff new, then everybody else that has something to say, they just raise their hand.And her main point:
I’d like to sort of suggest that hou have some dialog about this resolution that you just made. Maybe it could be modified so that people could continue to come, rather than three people could come.
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-jsq
The Lowndes County Commission Tuesday
voted in
and
Chairman Paulk announced
new
Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
Interestingly, since the Commission rushed through these new rules after the last meeting, there was no time to completely implement them, so the first thing the Chairman did was to set them aside for this meeting.
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Metro Atlanta cities want to air their business in living rooms. Alpharetta agreed to spend $68,000 for a video recording system in its council chambers. Dunwoody will shell out $93,000 for a digital video recording system, enabling residents to view city council and planning commission meetings live from home.Continue readingWhile not every city electronically records its council meetings, the practice has become increasingly popular.
“It’s an overall trend of cities, going where people are to share information, to keep people in touch,” said Amy Henderson, Georgia Municipal Association spokeswoman.
Here
I discuss with the mayor
about the Valdosta City Council videoing their entire meetings and putting
them on the web for everybody to see.
The mayor indicated costs of streaming was an issue;
I recommended putting it on YouTube or Vimeo and letting them handle that part.
I think the AJC article he mentioned is this one:
Meeting access video grows among city councils,
by Patrick Fox, 18 Jan 2011.
This comment by the mayor was amusing:
The worst thing you could do would be to have one camera in the back that has room audio.Touche, Mr. Mayor! :-) What do you think, is a noisy video from the back of the room more useful than no video at all? Can you see him waving his arms around? Continue reading
5. Resolution Establishing Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to Be Heard and Consideration of Lowndes County Board of Commissioners Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to Be HeardToday I went by the county palace (hey, they call it that, too!) and asked Paige Dukes, the County Clerk, what was in the old resolution and what’s in the new draft resolution. She said there was no old resolution, and a bit later she sent me the new draft resolution, which is in the PDF below.
It’s a PDF of a scan of a paper page, so I don’t have the plain text. If somebody wants to type it in and send it to me, have at it.From: “Paige Dukes” <paiged@lowndescounty.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:32:35 -0500
To: “John S. Quarterman” <jsq@quarterman.org>
Subject: Resolution Draft 1.24.2011.pdf – Adobe Acrobat Professional
See you 5:30 PM tomorrow evening (Tuesday 25 Jan 2011) at 327 N. Ashley Street, Valdosta, GA 31601. They start on the dot or slightly early, and it’s a light agenda, so be on time and don’t blink or you’ll miss it.
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left to right: Ashley Paulk (Chairman), Joyce E. Evans (District 1), Crawford Powell (District 3), Richard Raines (District 2). |
5. Resolution Establishing Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to Be Heard and Consideration of Lowndes County Board of Commissioners Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to Be Heard
It also has the regular item:
7. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And AddressThis item is for the regular session, not the work session, although in the work session the Chairman sometimes notes somebody is there wanting to talk and asks them to say what they want to say. Conversely, in the regular session we don’t usually hear much from this one:
8. Reports-County ManagerThe county manager often gives a longer report in the work session.
By “very brief” I mean work sessions typically run about 15 minutes, with the record being something like 8 minutes. And they start on time, or a minute early. Be there or miss what you want to hear or say.
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Want to know what your city council really thinks?
Stay through the entire meeting
and you’ll get some clues; or watch these videos by some who did stay.
City Manager, Attorney, and each council member say what’s on their minds.
Much of it addresses some of the questions asked by citizens earlier:
cracks in the MLK monument, biomass,
council members answering questions from the audience, etc.
What they didn’t talk about may indicate what various citizens
didn’t succeed in conveying to the council.
It’s not like what they were saying was a secret. The VDT reporter was there. They were finishing up the agenda with the sections “7. City Manager’s Report” and “8. Council Comments”. You can see them adjourn at the end. Some of them groused about the time citizens take up in “Citizens Wishing to be Heard”.
But remember, almost none of those citizens bothered to stay around to listen to them. Among the stay-latest: two cameras for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange, providing you these two views: Continue reading