There seems to be a lot of moving parts in what City Council is trying to do with the City Charter and it seems this doesn’t end well for public transparency.
I’ve complained a lot over the years about the drive that council and other entities have toward tucking their discussions into closed meetings.
And, to me, few things have underlined that urge for secrecy than council’s city charter changes.
Revising the city charter didn’t surface publicly until council’s Jan. 28 meeting.
City Attorney Anne Marie Odefy began dissecting the wordage for revisions at that meeting, with the ultimate aim of having changes on the May 3 municipal election ballot.
There are five major revisions sought and a whole bunch of existing charter verbiage to be done away with.
We’ve looked up a year’s worth of council agenda and minutes and we could barely find any mention of charter changes until the Jan. 28 meeting.
I say barely because Councilman Jim Folse asked in public comments from council about staggering council terms in a charter change on Aug. 13.
That’s it folks.
Nothing else, until now.
And Odefy said the clock is ticking to approve the charter propositions for them to appear on that May 3 election.
To be exact, we were told Jan. 28 that the Feb. 11 meeting on Tuesdayis the last one slated before the deadline.
Then, late Friday, Feb. 7, the city posted a notice there would be a Monday, Feb. 10 workshop on the charter proposals.
At that Jan. 28 meeting, council said very little.
They sat as Odefy skimmed over the changes that include consolidating more power in the City Manager and taking some away from council.
Now, I wrote about major city hall changes last fall that were done behind closed doors.
Those actions ultimately were explained in a press release.
That is an example is how council’s overview was skirted, although City Charter requires such council approval.
Now we have proposed charter changes where the City Manager won’t need council approval on similar staffing changes.
For me, the issue of retreating into a closed meeting is a big deal.
Because a lot of matters can be lumped into “legal,” particularly since we have a City Attorney on staff to make that happen.
We are given no insight from the city when any issue is considered legal tender for an executive session.
And I think there needs to be a real “person” involved for a closed door personnel matter.
A position or department itself that’s discussed shouldn’t count as an executive session subject.
