Look at at this change to policies, (page 13) they are trying to find cover from their Constitutional duties;
Robert’s is a guideline on how to run a meeting, but those RULES do not supersede the 1st Amendment or US Constitution. Like I told the council last Tuesday (FF: 1:10) these are consideration rules that the public AND the council should use as a guideline to the meetings, but when it comes to PUBLIC INPUT anything besides violent threats is allowable and limiting speakers is blatant censorship and little else.
Instead of spending so much time trying to silence the public, why don’t you talk to us? The only time I see councilors is at Carnegie, makes you wonder if some of them are playing Marshall Selberg Musical Districts on us? Speaking of that crooked fella, still wondering why all the councilors and mayor shirked their responsibility of managing their own? Selberg should have been booted from the council and he should have been charged, but not these guys, circle the f’ing wagons.
Maybe I was the setup? I spoke at the informational meeting* today during public input. Since there was nothing on the agenda except more executive sessions I chose to speak about item #4 on the agenda, which was PUBLIC COMMENT. I basically informed them that council meeting rules don’t supersede the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment and they need to stop cutting people off. I directed my comments at the entire council, not just chair Soehl. I told them they need to STOP the chair if they are wrongfully cutting people off. I think the council needs a crash course in the 1st Amendment and Public Input, and would even be willing to give my taxdollars to school them. They don’t seem to understand who controls the government, it’s not them, it’s us.
Well the mayor must be off at a jumping jacks convention because Curtis decided to chair the next regular meeting (FF: 41:00) and he got another earful about how they fail to listen to constituents and when they have no discussion on unanimous votes it tells the public you are making decisions before the meeting in private conversations (heck, the school board has been doing that for decades!)
Though some of the people who spoke tonight have shady pasts (that was an interesting google search 🙁 they made valuable points about our 1st Amendment rights and how ineffective and thin skinned our current council is, and the longer termed members are the worst of the lot!
This council better buck up fast and take control of the public’s meetings, because it is turning into a real circus and the dancing bears are the council.
*The meeting hasn’t posted yet because they were having ‘technical’ issues. These same issues pop up every couple of weeks for the past decade or more. You would think the city IT department would have figured this out already?! I am pretty damn sure they are censoring certain things and that is why it happens so often. I mean, someone can’t f’up that much unless it is on purpose.
One of the public inputers, Bruce Head told us he is suing the city over civil rights. Here is a link to the filing.
I actually didn’t have lunch with the chief, but he was addressing the Breakfast Club today at NOON at the City’s admin building where I was the only citizen in attendance at the beginning (it’s mostly elected officials from the region that show up to these monthly get togethers). I go for the free lunch 🙂
Thum said that officers with more experience dealing with people and managing situations are better officers then those with degrees in criminal justice. While I believe him, I asked him this question, “I want officers to have at least a 2 year degree in criminal justice because I want officers to know the LAW when they are responding to a situation. Thum did confess he would like officers with experience in both areas, but prefers officers with people skills over law knowledge. His excuse was different laws in different jurisdictions. Well guess what? Officers should know the laws they are enforcing. I think the Chief should be focusing on hiring people with both skill sets and not just settling for mediocre. I got the feeling from his response that Thum is trying to fill a quota, and he doesn’t seem to care how he fills that quota, bodies on the street scenario.
The above picture is an officer hiding behind a utility box on private property of a local manufacturer I took a few days ago. Wondering if this is one of his ‘people person’ officers? I don’t have a problem with officers taking breaks, but they should be in a public parking lot or at the precinct.
I also presented this question to Thum, “I want to address shutting off the scanners. I researched the Federal regulations and it is well within your right to turn the scanners completely off (Thum nods) but the suggestion from the Feds is to only turn them off for sensitive situations like wellness checks, overdoses, domestic, etc. So I want to set up a scenario for you. We had a train derailment downtown a few years ago. Luckily it was just corn and it didn’t knock over the viaduct, but these same trains carry tons of chemicals thru downtown every day. What if it derails again and there is a massive chemical spill and you have to evacuate thousands of people from downtown. How will you get that info to the public in a timely manner if the scanners are shutoff?”
He did say the Fire Department has a notification system (not sure what that is) and that they TEXT people. I can tell you that downtown is full of older homes with poorer elderly people living in them, they likely don’t have cell phones. I wasn’t really satisfied with his answer. I often tell folks, once we have open government a lot of these issues disappear in the night, but I don’t think Thum gets it.
Joe did a great blog post today about the charter. While I disagree with some of his premises and anecdotes he is right about ONE thing;
City government would be improved if we established a better separation of powers while at the same time, strengthening the role of our legislature. Here are some changes I think are worth considering in the charter and/or the way city government operates.
Take the next mayor off the city council to establish better separation of powers.
I think this would FORCE the council to do policy because they would be running their own meetings and agendas. This doesn’t mean the mayor could not still present policy but he would have to get at least ONE sponsor on the council and if it really is HIS policy and not something a department head cooked up, he needs to come to the council and present.
I think the charter has worked well also, but the biggest problem is the laziness of the councils since and the corruption at city hall. This of course spells incompetence.
Some rules and regs really do work, but you must apply them, this city has NOT when it comes to policy and our legislative branch.
Update: I want to correct this post. Since it has been confirmed he resigned and was not terminated they can handle it as a personal issue in executive session. Now if he didn’t willingly resign, they would have to vote on terminating him in public.
Update: The rumor circulating is he was terminated because he pissed off developers. I know, shocker!
The short answer is YES. When the Sioux Falls city council decided to fire then city clerk Owens behind closed doors they got slapped with an open meetings violation. Harrisburg recently fired their city administrator behind closed doors. That is a NO-NO. Whether the person was doing a good job* or not does not matter, an appointed position like this is hired in the open and fired in the open. I hope this person slaps Harrisburg with this violation.
*There was a quiet recall effort amongst citizens in Harrisburg to get rid of the city administrator. Not sure if this had an effect on his firing or not? He also was getting into it with our mayor over jurisdiction lines and the state over the prison. Will we ever know why he was fired?
l3wis 
