Tonight is a special meeting of the DeKalb city council. Unlike all other council meetings, this meeting will not be recorded on video. That’s because the city does not know how to video-record meetings outside of council chambers, and council is not meeting in chambers tonight, even though this is the only city meeting scheduled.
Instead, they’re holding it in the Bilder room at DeKalb Public Library. I understand that the Bilder room holds about 30 people. If true, it’s a potential problem, because it’s a committee of the whole meeting, where the number of participating city staff will likely outnumber the council members, and leave — maybe — seating for only about 15 members of the general public.
If more people show up than the room can reasonably hold, that’s an Open Meetings Act violation.
The venue makes no sense.
The vague agenda item is also questionable when it comes to OMA: “Goal-setting session.” That’s it. Fortunately, staff were a little less lazy about putting together the agenda packet for the finance advisory committee (whose meeting has been rescheduled for January 30, FYI) so I’m able to share more. The memo to FAC says this:
On January 24, 2018, the City Council will hold a Goal Setting Session to determine what goals they want to accomplish in 2018. As part of that session, the Council would be asked to identify short-term and long-term goals. Specifically, goals or projects they would like to address in the next one to two years would be identified. This would determine what subject areas Council wants staff to focus their time on and could impact the current and future budgets. Council will be asked to identify the broad outcomes to be accomplished in the next 18 months to three-and-a-half years.
But that’s not all. I’ve attended several planning sessions over the four years of city manager Anne Marie Gaura’s tenure. She is incapable of hiding her hostility toward us. They place the tables in an enclosed rectangle so the audience is facing people’s backs, and between this unfortunate positioning and their failure to use microphones, what you hear is dependent on the projection skills of each individual. Meanwhile, the audience has to wait an average of four hours for a chance to speak to its representatives, after all the decisions have been made.
It’s sketchy. Unacceptable. A 100% shut-out in every meaningful way.
Which is exactly why you should attend if you can.