Councilor Neitzert in his bizarre attempt to swat down councilors Stehly and Starr for their resolution to make sure the Events Center Campus Book Club meetings remain open, he offered an amendment praising the mayor and the group for deciding to OPEN their meetings, at last night’s city council meeting.
Huh?
First off, the meetings should not have been closed to begin with, if any amendment should have been offered it should have been for censuring the administration for closing the meetings. Even councilor Brekke said that state open meeting laws are a bare minimum of what should be open, or as she said a ‘Starting point’. Local government should go above and beyond those standards.
Neitzert’s amendment was obviously offered to try to make Starr and Stehly’s resolution irrelevant. Councilor Soehl who attends the meetings said that they really haven’t decided how the open meetings will be conducted yet because they are uncertain how they will take public input.
Huh?
State law requires public input at all open meetings, so there is no debate on how you will ‘take public input’. It’s just a matter of when, which most likely be at the end of the meeting.
Stehly and Starr gladly supported Neitzert’s amendment in the end (they knew they had to, to get it to pass, which it did).
Some councilors feared that this would set a precedent on how these kind of task forces would operate, I think that is a good precedent, not bad.
OPEN = Good, CLOSED = Bad.
Neitzert also bragged about how the annexation meetings were held at Carnegie with ample public input. Remember, that was NOT the original intent and after Councilor Stehly, the public and ‘the blog’ complained that the meetings were going to be held in the middle of the afternoon at the DT library where people had to feed meters that quickly got changed after several property owners complained about the meeting situation. Maybe we should ‘commend’ the annexation task force for changing those meetings also. LOL.
Neitzert talks out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand he uses VERY pointed language in being highly critical about Stehly’s pothole ordinance and apparently some related discussion offered by others in the room. The next minute he’s got an amendment to Stehly’s task force open meeting ordinance, to whitewash with obsequious diplomacy any trace of language from the original proposal which may be the least bit assertive or reflect unfavorably on the mayor. One minute “gloves off . . . all’s fairâ€. The next minute, tip toeing through the tulips. Methinks that’s called hypocrisy.
Let’s give credit where credit is due.
It was councilors Starr and Stehly who applied public pressure to open these secret meetings.
In addition, talk to any resident in the Split Rock area and they will tell you they thank Councilor Stehly for getting the word out about the potential annexation, not the City!
We vote in a municipal election in 2020. Those up for re-election (if they so choose) will be Neitzert, Selberg, Starr and Stehly.
He really is making it easy to target him. I already had to buy a second flash drive to keep everything saved on.