After having several individual discussions with councilors over the past few months about public input, libel and the city’s inability to live stream a video in YouTube it all came to a head at tonight’s meeting.
Mayoral Candidate David Z. came to the podium tonight and asked for some public information. He got nowhere and the council seemed confused also. I know I mentioned this awhile back, but the solution to these problems with transparency is for the city to hire a full-time public information officer who works for 3 entities; Law Office, City Council and Mayor’s Office. It would be preferable that this person had a law degree or is a paralegal. They would also have to have some marketing bonafides. Either way, this person would be the liaison to the media and the public when it comes to information. They would manage all pressers, media inquiries, constituent concerns, etc. They would also manage all of the city’s meetings making sure they are noticed correctly and the right materials are posted with the agenda. I would also like them to take on a side project of creating an information tab on the city’s website that makes it easy to find information, preferably on the front page (the current search engine is a gigantic POS*).
I used to think that many city employees just don’t care about following open meeting laws so they don’t.
But it is NOT that.
As I understand it, each department manager is responsible for their meeting’s agenda and with their other duties, they really shouldn’t be asked to be open government experts. I just think they don’t have anyone guiding them to do the right thing. If you had one or even two people in the city who were in charge of this, it would take a lot of stress off of these directors and managers that have other important work to do besides looking up open meeting laws.
*I don’t use the city’s website search engine, I learned another trick that works better; When you open Google type in; siouxfalls.gov: topic. In other words type the topic you are searching for like ‘building permits’. It isn’t perfect but it works much better then the city’s website. Good thing we paid almost $1 million for the upgraded website. We got taken to the cleaners.
Cheney is dead, while his hunting buddies are relieved. Oh, and how I miss the good old days when we only had to worry about extraordinary renditions or waterboarding…. AND, you know, Liz still claims that waterboarding is not torture ( Wow, can you imagine the corporate punishment that goes on in her household?). But we now live in a much stranger time, indeed, where even Cheney became our ally and his sidekick, Dubya, too. But they do say your enemy’s enemy is your friend, but just remember to be hesitant when it comes to hunting with that new friend. 🙂
“Say, Grammar Cop!” …. “Is it ‘corporate,’ or ‘corporal’ punishment?” …… “Or, should I ask Martial Selberg that question?” ….. ( ….. “Or, is it ‘Marshall’?” …… ) ……..
The Mayor’s staff already includes a highly compensated Public Relations & Communication Officer, Greater than $1.1 million of salaries, as well as associated hourly staff on Hartzler’s staff dedicated to “Comunication”.
Should be able to redirect some of this investment in human captial to satisfy your request.
If a legal background is necessary to communicate to the press and public, perhaps City bureaucrats in these departmemts shouldn’t be operating on the fringe of illegal (and unethical; lacking in transparency of action).