Guest Post by Mayoral Candidate David Zokaites

Goals

  • Government should care more about public
  • Government should respond to citizens
  • More interaction between government, citizens
  • Would profoundly impact modern life 

Community Outreach

  • Mayor should weekly dine with random city residents
  • Plus weekly lunch with random city employee
  • City councilors, department heads should also regularly meet with random people
  • New mayor will meet with all councilors individually
  • Mayor, councilors should have annual barbecue for camaraderie (invite public too)
  • It’s all part of the job

City Council Meetings

  • Mayor – facilitator, main power source
  • City councilors – vote on proposals, usually approve mayor
  • Citizens – provide input, usually ignored
  • Let’s change the dynamic
  • Increase city council power
  • At-large councilors should be full-time not part-time
  • Utilize public input to create better laws

Current Council Invocation

  • Prayer by minister chosen by mayor
  • Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”
  • Check to see if starting public meeting with prayer is constitutional
  • Take a survey, see if citizens want to keep prayer
  • Council also says Pledge of Allegiance

Ideas for Invocation

  • Mayor’s prayer for community (I wrote one)
  • Mayor’s secular pledge (I wrote one)
  • Mayor’s prayer for social healing (I wrote one)
  • Mayor’s prayer for personal healing (I wrote one)
  • Each city councilor should present their prayer or pledge
  • Invite public to present prayer or pledge

Public Input

  • Mostly ignored – should be valued
  • Limited to certain points in the meeting
  • Better to allow input after raising your hand
  • Each public inputer should be contacted by district councilor, at-large councilor, mayor’s assistant, or mayor
  • Acknowledgement is key to peace, progress
  • Allow PowerPoint and electronic presentations
  • They were generally disallowed 4 years ago
  • Exclusion was (apparently) directed against myself and Bruce Danielson
  • Move public input back to the start of council meeting to encourage more public input

Designing Laws

  • Ordinances (usually) decided long before public presentation
  • Design laws with actual citizen involvement
  • Convert council meeting from theater to meaningful discussion
  • Present rough ideas at council, a preliminary reading (new)
  • Keep first reading of codified proposals
  • Keep second reading

Controversial Votes

  • If any proposal has 3 or more public comments …
  • All councilors and mayor should explain their votes
  • Limit explanation to 2 minutes  

4 Thoughts on “Interactive Government: David Zokaites

  1. NTNLIQ on April 12, 2022 at 6:48 am said:

    The amount of comments on this post are a good indication of how many votes Mr. Z will receive today.

  2. D@ily Spin on April 12, 2022 at 9:00 am said:

    Citizens should vote for you to send a message that they want to eliminate Strong Arm Charter. Oligarchs have control such that government no longer represents the people. A half billion annual budget goes to insiders in the form of special yet impractical and extravagant projects. Contracts are cost plus and should be competitive bid with sound staged general accounting.

    You seem to address social subjects. To much prayer. To much inexperienced citizen control. Still, your term(s) could upset the corrupt undemocratic framework.

    I suspect this election is already decided via bribed city employee compensation and special interest arms. I feel change will come from public demonstrations. There must be federal government intervention. When the Governor activated the National Guard the charter can be dissolved in favor of, by, and for the people. All, not just a handful of socialists.

  3. D@ily Spin on April 12, 2022 at 12:22 pm said:

    There’s a serious problem with present city government. The charter insults, defies, and often denies citizens democratic representation. A few decide policy while also gaining wealth from improper side deals. Zokaitis has a narrow perspective but voting for him sends a message.

  4. Very Stable Genius on April 12, 2022 at 2:37 pm said:

    But I didn’t know you could vote more than once? 😉

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