08/10/2010 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of a Public Hearing On Proposed Charter Review Revisions 8-10-10 Page 30 Dr. Parker replied, that's what I'm trying to clarify. Mr. Diemert stated, that's not an issue. Dr. Parker stated, okay. Thank you. Mayor Rinker stated, if I can, I would just like to make an observation. I do take to heart the comment that we don't provide the Minutes on the web because it's something that is important. Where we have failed in that I certainly want to make sure we correct it. But the other part is, we really have been trying to improve the lines of communication. We have revamped our website. It took a while. It cost some money to do that, but in fact we did put on our homepage, we've got a mechanism that is designed to advise people of current meetings that are upcoming. We used the website to advertise this meeting. We did not advertise it in the VOV, but we did get into the VOV discussion about the fact that there were these Charter proposals forthcoming and we certainly will put into the mail the specific legislation that is proposed because we're supposed to do that by law. I know we did use the marquee to identify this meeting and we did send out mailings to everyone advising them of the meeting. The meeting itself that we're having tonight is not something that is specified in the Charter. Part of the discussion at the Council meetings after the Commission made its recommendations was to have a public hearing like this and so we did advertise it. Obviously bad news travels faster than good news. I have a feeling that a lot of people who got the notice didn't really pay much attention to it. On the other hand, those that did get the more provocative notice -, so maybe we should be changing our methodology. But in all candor, it is very important that you get information. We've been trying to use different methodologies. We know we have to make improvements with the website. It's an ongoing process. The most blatant one to me is that we've got to get Minutes out in a timely fashion. All meetings are public, committee meetings, commission meetings, board meetings. There are very few people that have the time much less the inclination to come, so we don't use that as an excuse. We thought a public hearing would be a more effective way, at least to get people aware well in advance of November that these are items that under our Charter have to be reviewed by the public. So again, we take to heart the fact that, and you have a legitimate requirement of your public officials to make these things public. We're working on it. We try to improve it. Clearly we can make more improvements but I want you to know that it's not for lack of effort and we do encourage this kind of discussion. We don't get this at every meeting, but I'm really heartened by the fact that a lot of people did show up. To me this is the way our democratic process is ¦ supposed to work. So I thank you for coming. The audience applauded. m