Brevity is the Soul of What?
City Council members smile at each other lately over the brevity of their meetings.
An hour for agenda sessions, fifteen minutes or less for regular meetings – it seems that’s all the governing body needs these days to do the city’s business. And the audience has dwindled as well. On Wednesday, Rasheed Abdul-Haqq came into Municipal Court for the meeting and saw not one other member of the public. By the time Frank D’Aversa strolled in a while later, the meeting was over.
It’s not as if there is nothing going on in the city that deserves a little more public discussion or interest from elected officials. There are lots of redevelopment plans, but they mostly get a quick show-and-tell, then they sink from sight until a final vote. One company has bought up mostly all the commercial real estate in the city and another has acquired 25 apartment buildings, the bulk of the city’s rental housing. Not a peep from merchants or tenants, let alone the governing body.
The city could have begun preliminary cable TV franchise renewal activities back in August, but only a few people got appointed to the board that is also meant to monitor the local channel. There is no one on the Hispanic Affairs Commission or the Environmental Commission and other boards have only a few members, not enough to do business. Granted, appointments mostly come from the mayor, but having voted these bodies into existence, doesn’t the council wonder why they are not being constituted with members?
Plaintalker is not advocating a return to those days of endless and sometimes pointless discussions that used to take place when a few garrulous public servants dominated the governing body, but can life in the Queen City be so wonderfully bland nowadays that there’s nothing to say?
--Bernice Paglia
An hour for agenda sessions, fifteen minutes or less for regular meetings – it seems that’s all the governing body needs these days to do the city’s business. And the audience has dwindled as well. On Wednesday, Rasheed Abdul-Haqq came into Municipal Court for the meeting and saw not one other member of the public. By the time Frank D’Aversa strolled in a while later, the meeting was over.
It’s not as if there is nothing going on in the city that deserves a little more public discussion or interest from elected officials. There are lots of redevelopment plans, but they mostly get a quick show-and-tell, then they sink from sight until a final vote. One company has bought up mostly all the commercial real estate in the city and another has acquired 25 apartment buildings, the bulk of the city’s rental housing. Not a peep from merchants or tenants, let alone the governing body.
The city could have begun preliminary cable TV franchise renewal activities back in August, but only a few people got appointed to the board that is also meant to monitor the local channel. There is no one on the Hispanic Affairs Commission or the Environmental Commission and other boards have only a few members, not enough to do business. Granted, appointments mostly come from the mayor, but having voted these bodies into existence, doesn’t the council wonder why they are not being constituted with members?
Plaintalker is not advocating a return to those days of endless and sometimes pointless discussions that used to take place when a few garrulous public servants dominated the governing body, but can life in the Queen City be so wonderfully bland nowadays that there’s nothing to say?
--Bernice Paglia
posted by Bernice at 8:12 AM
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