Ellen Smith for Oak Ridge home page

City Council “agenda setting”

Friday July 18th 2008, 5:31 pm
Filed under: Calendar, Oak Ridge Issues

City Council’s long-awaited “agenda setting” retreat (the sequel to the abandoned “visioning” process) is tomorrow morning (Saturday, July 19) from 8 am to 1 pm, at the Municipal Services Center.

Like all City Council meetings and work sessions, this is a public meeting; I have no idea how much “public” we will see.

We’ve been getting a lot of input from citizens who have ideas about what the City’s agenda should be, and I hope we’ll have time to discuss those ideas (plus ideas of our own). The agenda looks like it might be heavy on facilitation and DVDs, and a bit light on interaction (I do hope I’m wrong about that):

8:00: Welcome and Opening Comments

8:15: Introduction: Who Raised the Bar? Driving forces Creating the Turbulence. Sandy S. (facilitator)

8:45: Feedback from Council…Emerging Themes from Council Input {Open Discussion}

Break:

9:30: Group Decision Making Process and “The Abilene Paradox” brief DVD

10:00: The Growth Curve…a model for understanding the stages and phases of change as applied to:
• The Community
• City Staff
• City Council Leaders
Group discussion on “where we are” before discussing “where we are going.”

11:00: Break

11:15: Leaders as Change Agents “Mission Critical” DVD Lessons from NASA for Oak Ridge {Group Discussion}

12:00 Lunch

12:45: Where do we go from here?

• Remaining focused amidst 27,000 customers
• Determining our priorities

UPDATE (August 11, 2008):

We’ve had two agenda-setting sessions now (the one on July 19 was followed by a second session on August 2), and we’re still not where people wanted to be (another session will be scheduled), but progress has been made.

One thing that Council members seem to agree on is that we don’t have nearly enough opportunities to discuss. Open meetings laws prevent deliberation on city business outside of announced meetings and work sessions, and interactions during formal meetings and work sessions are inhibited by various factors. At meetings those inhibiting factors include long agendas, parliamentary procedure, the physical layout of the courtroom where Council meets, and the presence of TV cameras. At work sessions, interaction is limited due to the fact that most of the scheduled time is devoted to formal presentations — there’s seldom enough time for everyone to ask all of their questions about the topic, much less discuss it among ourselves.

As a result of the realization that we all want more discussion, in October we will try out a new procedure of having a pre-meeting work session (Mayor Tom Beehan is calling it a “caucus”) one week before the regular meeting to discuss the items on the agenda for the following week’s meeting. The first such session is scheduled for October 13, 2008, one week before the October 20th meeting.



Consideration of red-light camera contract delayed to August

Thursday July 17th 2008, 11:04 am
Filed under: Calendar, Oak Ridge > Public safety, Oak Ridge Issues

If you were hoping the red-light camera issue would be resolved soon (one way or the other) so that other public concerns could get attention, you will need to wait another month. City staff does not have a proposed contract ready for City Council consideration this month, so the next vote on the subject is now expected to happen at the August 18, 2008, City Council meeting.

UPDATE: The vote is in. City Council voted 4 to 3 to authorize a contract with RedFlex. In favor of the camera contract were Mayor Tom Beehan, Mayor Pro-Tem Jane Miller, Tom Hayes, and Charlie Hensley. Opposed were Willie Golden, Dave Mosby, and Ellen Smith (that’s me).

The contract will be for 5 years (with optional renewal periods) and it authorizes up to 15 camera installations for speed and/or red-light enforcement. There will be signs to inform motorists that photo enforcement is in use, and at each location there will be a 30-day “warning” period during which violators will get warning tickets (but no fines).Staff wants to start slow with 3 camera locations targeting school zones.

It goes without saying that his was not an easy decision, and the community expressed strong passions on both sides of the issue.



A “paper trail” for early voting

Thursday July 03rd 2008, 8:55 am
Filed under: Life in General, Local News

Wow, I’ve fallen way behind here…

One piece of recent good news is the report that Anderson and Roane Counties, along with two other East Tennessee counties, will be using optical-scan voting machines for early voting this year. The optical scan system uses electronic technology to record votes, but because voters mark their choices on paper, a paper record of the vote is retained and is available for auditing in case of challenges to the election for results. Also, by bringing in extra machines for early voting, election officials will free up several of their “regular” eSlate machines for use on Election Day.

For me, the existence of an audit trail (and not having to use the annoying eSlate device) will be just one more incentive to vote early. Early voting in the August election starts July 18.


 


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