Monday's Meeting is at City Hall

Random image: "Pink Diamond" blooms for the third time.

My apologies to those who accepted my little calendars for the balance of 2009.

Please note that the first meeting under the new schedule will be held at City Hall Library, not Emerson School as listed on the calendar. Click here for the full schedule as posted on the City web site.

I made up my small calendars after I presumed the air had cleared and all possible glitches had been resolved. The saga had begun when City Council President Rashid Burney proposed changing the council's schedule to one meeting a month instead of meetings on first and third Mondays, with agenda fixing sessions on preceding Mondays. But because the council had already adopted a calendar based on the existing formula, Burney's revisions had to be passed by ordinance and then the dates could be passed by resolution.

There were quite a number of errors in the first version of the calendar, but they were gradually worked out. However, because the official calendar was still in place, somehow the relocation of agenda sessions to schools in April and October got assigned to the first agenda session under the old calendar instead of the new one. Therefore, instead of April 6 at Emerson School and Oct. 5 at Hubbard Middle School, information was posted all over City Hall listing April 13 at Emerson and Oct. 13 at Hubbard. Use of the school buildings was then secured using the old calendar dates.

Well then, guess what? The inaugural agenda session under the new calendar fell on an evening reserved for parent-teacher conferences at Emerson. Therefore, the April 6 meeting must now be held at City Hall Library.

Burney had given out his new calendar far in advance of the legislative moves to make it official. So it could, and should, have been used for planning purposes to secure the schools on April 6 and Oct. 5. But it wasn't. So disregard the first date on my little calendar and really disregard all those notices that are up in City Hall with the wrong dates.

The city web site has, under Community Events, an advisory that correctly has the April 6 meeting at City Hall Library. But then it goes on to state that the other two meetings at schools in 2009 will be on Tuesdays instead of Mondays!

With various officials seemingly all humming "My Way" insteading of collaborating to get the facts right, it is no wonder that citizens can't follow the moves. The relocation to neighborhood schools was highly publicized in the media, but it will not happen April 6.

The rest of my little calendar should jibe with the one linked above. Sorry for the confusion.

--Bernice Paglia