Revised Agenda for tonight's Special Council Meeting

Revised Agenda: Pepper Pike City Council Special Meeting 3/24/10

3 comments:

Jeff Hess said...

Shalom Jill,

I love it when politicians put items like this on agendas and make no mention of how much money is involved ($100? $100,000?) where the money is going or who screwed up so badly that an emergency has to be called.

B'shalom,

Jeff

Jill said...

Thanks for the comment, Jeff.

The whole "emergency measure" thing is pretty fascinating but before I go into explaining it, are you familiar with what it represents? I don't want to bore. It mostly has to do with dispensing of three readings before approval and going into effect but from what I hear from other cities' council members, it is very overused.

Back in February, I almost voted against allowing a resolution to be heard on an emergency measure basis (you need five votes to approve something on an emergency basis and if you don't have five, it fails and you just have to go through the usual three readings I believe, or drop the resolution or action being sought) because I did not favor the action being pursued. There were only going to be five voting members at the meeting and we all knew that. Ultimately, the action did not come up for a vote and so this became moot.

There's a lot of back and forth on how and when emergency measures should be used, especially in the era of electronic communications for those communities that are very electronically savvy. The public policy behind NOT using emergency measures is public discourse and notification, among other things. The public policy behind using the emergency measure provision is that some resolutions/actions are of little consequence or might be the opposite and truly in need of being enacted quickly due to other time sensitive issues.

As for the no mention of the numbers, the budget info was presented to us as council members last Tuesday evening (we received it at our homes). The information is public and is something like 16-20 pages of numbers, all documents included.

Are you suggesting that the draft budget be appended to the agenda for people to print out? I'd not thought of that, and I don't know if any other cities do that - do you?

The issue of placing financial docs online is something I've raised multiple times and expect to continue to pursue.

Jeff Hess said...

Shalom Jill,

Yes, I'm familiar with the whole emergency measure tool. It was way overused by the Cleveland Heights City Council back in the '80s and early '90s (and that may still be the case) when I was attending meetings on a fairly regular basis.

As to appending data to the agenda, I think that would be a great idea, but the agenda itself should also include a dollar amount with a note that a breakdown is available in the downloadable document.

B'shalom,

Jeff