Personal Narrative: My Experience Of Regular City Council Meeting

One thing of significance that I learned about at the city council meeting was meeting procedure. When I first arrived a pre-meeting workshop about annexation was occurring. After the regular meeting began we started with the Pledge of Allegiance. Next roll call of the council members was taken. Dallas Center has five council members: Mike Kidd, David Bagby, Kurt Pion,. Following roll call was an action to approve the agenda, which was approved. Next up was public communications and concerns. I was surprised that each person only has two minutes to talk about all the issues they

The meeting agenda included a call to order, roll call, reading of the call, pledge of allegiance, some recognition of county members for service, announcements, and a time for public comment. This happened all within the first twenty minutes of the beginning of the meeting. Then the meeting switched over into having a few appearances, talking about department reports, resolutions in the county, ordinances, annual

Of course, during meetings, many questions are sure to arise about the same factors. Most people want know what will be done on roadway conditions, what will be done about the cleaning of the parks, etc. One of the biggest, and very surprising, issues brought up recently by the Common Council is a chicken ordinance for Warsaw. In a unanimous vote, the Warsaw Planning Commission has given their approval to allow chickens within the city limits. However, the Council voted “no” on the ordinance that, if passed, would have allowed a select number of residents to raise and maintain chickens on their property inside the city

The experience going to the council meeting was great and I would imagine that the items on the agenda had a great deal to do with that. The topics I found the most interesting revolved around public nudity, serving alcohol in public, spending grant money, a gun ordinance, and polling the public about being taxed. The agenda item revolving around public nudity took up most of the time. Currently, Eureka doesn't have a ordinance in place to give police authority to arrest citizens who are nude in public when it isn't a sexual act. The chief of police gave example of a person doing Tai Chi in a public park nude. The police were called and couldn't do anything short of asking him to put his clothes on. There was concern among a few council members

The meeting agenda included the topics that were going to be discussed which made the meeting more structured. To start off the meeting, they called the meeting, announced the time and date, took roll call, and then everyone stood up and said the pledge of allegiance. There was a Personal Appearance from Jim Haddock and he first had to state his full name and address. He thanked the city council board for the bills, as he

The meeting had preplanned agendas concerning the planning staff and services to citizens. The types of services are residential, commercial, and industrial land use development ordinances. The meeting opened with a prayer followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, call to order, determination of a quorum, to ensure all board members are present and adoption of minutes. The Chairman, Mr. Keith Williams, was the moderator and he was very polite and efficient, by giving citizens and local official the opportunity to speak. The atmosphere was very static, because there were great number of residents there awaiting their chance to speak about a certain zoning agenda (City of Gulfport,

On September 6th, I attended the Cleveland County school board meeting. I grew up in a nontraditional schooling environment; therefore, attending a school board meeting was a new experience for me. On the agenda, the board covered subjects such as nominating in new board members, honoring new teachers in the county schools, getting approval for a new basketball court, and asking for approval for a high school trip to Germany in the summer of 2017.

The City of Whittier has two city meetings a month were the people of the community are welcome to attend. One of their city council meetings was held on April 26 at 6:30pm. The council members are Owner Newcomer, Cathy Warner and Bob Henderson. The Mayor Pro tem is Joe Vinatieri and the Mayor of Whittier is Fernando Dutra. There was a good amount of public attendance, but the attendance died out after recess. Public participation was not effective or really used throughout the meeting. The public comments part of the meeting was where the public’s voice was most heard.

Robert Dahl's Traditional Democratic Theory really does explain what is needed to make a healthy democracy. In this meeting, his theory was expressed by the lack of public participation which leads to the public not being in control. Attendance from the public is very important or else it is just a meeting between the council. I love my city, but I would not attend another meeting because the voice of the public is hardly heard so it wouldn't make that much of a difference. It was also very long, off schedule, and a little hard to understand everything the council was saying. That council meeting was my first and last meeting I attend. I did learn though how important it is for the public to speak up and be present if they want to have

If I were mayor of Sublette I would appoint a tough and reliable person as town fire chief and my assistant fire would be a trustworthy person that is liked throughout the community. I would also appoint a very organized person as my city secretary that I know that every demand will be taken care of and my city will not be in debt or have major problems. Likewise I would appoint a handy and helpful person as my city superintendent, the person who completes the maintenance needs around my town. The people that I assign to these roles will all be organized, some more than others, they will be kind to their peers in the community, as well as reliable and trustworthy.

The meeting continued with the Joint Consent Calendar, the consent calendar is a grouping of routine matters to be acted on in one motion. There were six items considered and recommended actions taken anywhere from issues related to utilities to professional services. At the end of this presentation it was open to public hearing providing any concerned resident an opportunity to speak. This was followed by consent ordinances which city staff members began to speak about Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and its draft citizen participation plan for years 2015-2019. This was followed by an ordinance for the Civic Plaza which would limit the use of skateboards, bicycles, and leashed animals during special events held at this location. Following these issues the council would make a decision which would be placed on record for public view. New business was proposed where an approval of long ranged property management was projected, but they motioned to push this event forward to the next meeting due to the absence of a council member who was more familiar with the issue.

My question to Mr. Gary was how often does the City Council overrule his proposals. Ashworth (2001: 91) states that his board overrules him at least four times a year and sometimes more. Furthermore, Ashworth (2001: 92) points out that at meetings he has influence but he can be overruled, given instructions, handed assignments, and replaced. I based my question on Ashworth’s statement, ‘Relations with a governing board’.

About the people skills part, I think I am mostly true on other people describe me as very good with people and I frequently smile and laugh with teammates or classmates. Because I like to help people and if I can be helpful, it makes me happy. I often express appreciation to other people is also mostly true, because everyone has they own virtue and I always believe finding the virtue from other people and also help me to improve myself. But I am not frequently reach out to engage people, even stranger. Because sometime I feel nervous to talk to stranger, and I always become talk less when many people are discussing something. This point I think I need to improve. I think I need to improve my ability in “Dealing with Authority” because I have

I was very surprised at how many people actually attended the city hall meeting. Normally when you think of government, you assume that the people are less interested in attending meetings. This was especially what I thought would happen given the average amount of people who vote for local laws and political offices. Instead, I was surprised to see many people attending. While most of those who attended were older, there were some younger people as well. In general, the attendees where men between the ages of 40 and 70. Some were dressed professionally for the meeting, while others were obviously arriving straight from work and were dressed in work clothes. There were even a few construction workers present who were still in their day clothes. Most of the women who were present were older. My best guess is that the younger women stay at home with their children while their husbands attend the meeting. There were no children present, which was expected given that city council meetings are meant for adults.

I have never attended a community meeting or any meeting regarding my community therefore, attending this meeting for the first time was a great first experience. I was able to see how a meeting is ran and how the organization works in order to help make improvements in my community. When I went into the office the meeting was being held, I was offered an agenda and other informational forms regarding the meeting. The agenda provided information of how the organization of the meeting would be and who will be going over what topics. The meeting was a timed meeting where Richard Hernandez and Bill Houtt managed on recording to keep data. The issues that were discussed were citizen’s request for city improvements, a short review of the 2016 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) Accomplishments, which is a grant that helps build homes for low income families and was reviewed by Rhonda Haynes a community developer. Lastly, the Sidewalk at Divisadero and Rinaldi, North Visalia citizen report were also discussed by Bill Houtt a member of the committee, and construction issues in N. Visalia discussed by Lt. Brent Abbott.