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