Surprising Stuff

The Lake Geneva City Council is considering making local government more efficient and less time consuming by combining committees and streamlining other parts of the city’s operations. Although the primary purpose behind this move was to save time, the city council should also include improving the meetings themselves.
Some of the ideas suggested at the Committee of the Whole were as follows:

1. Reduce the number of meeting.
2. Reduce the number of days that people are tied up with meetings.
3. Reduce time spent in meetings.
4. Reduce the duplication of efforts.
5. Simplify and speed up the process.
6. Avoid overlapping meetings.
7. Allow for citizen input at the end of the meeting.

Where does time served come in?

Being organized takes time, but being disorganized takes more time and leads to delays and poor decisions. In reviewing the combining of meetings the city council also needs to look at the whole picture including improving the meetings themselves, and not just the time spent at them. Time is one of the most important commodities, so why waste it when it can be used more productively simply by doing something else. To make meetings more efficient the meeting members and those attending the meeting need to be informed. Making the meeting packet available for the city council meetings prior to the meeting is a good method of enabling members, and the attending public, to be informed about the meeting’s agenda. Currently the packet is only made available after 5 pm Friday evening for the following Monday’s meeting. This limits the time one has to review the lengthy document and prepare for the coming meeting to the weekend when access to city hall’s information and staff are not available, because city hall is closed.

It takes no more time to prepare the city council agenda and packet on the Monday prior to the meeting than it takes to have it prepared and ready at the end of the week on Friday. It’s only a matter of setting deadlines for things to be done, and following up to make sure that they are met. If the necessary information is not supplied in time to be included in the next meeting’s agenda and packet, then it should be delayed until the following meeting. Other meeting times could be adjusted to enable their information to be available at the next council meeting. For alderpersons, the mayor and the city administrator, meetings are both time consuming and time restricting. Time is again among the most important of commodities. It is important for the community to respect the time its leaders must put into their service.

Here are some ways to improve the city council, not discussed at the Meeting of the Whole. As the saying goes “You get what you pay for.”

Being a quality, caring alderperson is not just a part time job requiring a couple of hours a month. It’s almost a full time job. No amount of money can make someone honest, but a significant increase in pay would increase the number of capable people who might be willing to run for the city’s elected offices. The entire citizenry of Lake Geneva would have a much larger base of candidates to choose from, and the likelihood of unopposed elections would be much less prevalent. Also, the length of time for advanced notice to the public should be expanded on issues that will have a major impact on residents.

Perhaps these items could be announced at the city council meeting prior to being an agenda item for the following meeting. Or make the last agenda item an “Open Forum for Alderpersons” to discuss any issue. No action would be taken on these issues except the putting of any issue thought to be important enough onto the next meeting’s agenda. The Wisconsin open meetings law prevents aldermen from discussing public issues with each other outside of a public meeting, but public meetings are limited to agenda items. Having an “open forum” agenda item would give aldermen the opportunity to have a legal open discussion on any issue, and enable them to communicate with their fellow aldermen and with the public without being restrained by the open meeting law and/or the meeting’s agenda items.

Finally, we are in the electronic communication age and perhaps it is time to consider the following:

Permitting an alderman not physically present at a meeting to be considered present and to be able to vote at a meeting by an electronic means (phone/video conferencing).

Quality Video conferencing systems are FREE.

Run some meetings by video conferencing and permit the public to text questions.

The electronic packet format has changed and it displays differently on different devices. A single format should be identified and chosen.

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