You can listen HERE.
As I understand it there may be some amendments to the proposal on Tuesday, ultimately leaving it at the beginning of the meeting with some other restrictions. At this moment that train is still moving, so I would prefer not to elaborate.
Gotta love Stormland-TV’s version of this topic. Thirty-Seven people talked Tuesday night about public input. Out of those people, ONLYÂ 2 supported changing it, and both are former public/government employees. So guess who they interview? You guessed it, the TWO who wanted it moved, oh, and they threw in June Staggers to make it look fair.
Make no mistake, the Media wants this moved to the end so they can make their 10 PM news deadline.
I asked Dan Santella from KELO about this very concern. I also pointed out to him that Ann Hajek’s husband is an attorney who has worked on contracts with our City Finance department. So Ann’s interests in this placement of public input has a different energy than those average citizens who have had a concern about having the city attend to a vicious dog bite situation, or a mammoth pot hole, or a safety danger for children or a collapsing retaining wall onto a sidewalk etc.
I was also told by reporters, that council members have been approaching them for weeks and asking them if they would like to have the citizens speak at the end of the meeting. It is not for the media to decide when the citizens address their elected representatives.
Ann Hajek is also a former County Commissioner, who along with her fellow commissioners, got into trouble back in 2007 for violating the open meetings law as commissioners….. (Gee, lets interview her about open government, shall we?)
News reporting is a 24-hour cycle now. Most news consumers don’t depend on TV schedules, they get what they want when they want it on the Internet. If local TV stations really want to cover City Council for a dwindling audience on their 10pm news, let them use their live remote truck. The news studio anchor(s) can toss to their reporter at Carnegie Hall who can either report voting results or report that the meeting is ongoing. The anchor can encourage viewers to check for updates to the story on the station web site/FB page. For those that do still watch local TV news, notice time & again how the newscasts will cut to a reporter on a live remote . . . . merely standing just outside the station or at a nondescript location that has little if anything to do with the story being reported – just to break up a boring newscast & make it look like they’re really pounding the pavement for breaking news. If stations can waste live remotes on inane stunts like that, they can do it at Carnegie Hall. Heck, they could even have the reporter simply call in a live report on their cell phone during the newscast from Carnegie Hall.
Blas- You talk like someone who has been in the business before 🙂
Either way, someone suggested to be we livestream the meetings on a bigger screen at David’s across the street, offer drink specials and have live commentary from audience members, I of course would be the emcee. Sound like fun?