The Real Problem With Workshops

As reported in the Northwestern, Councilor Bain is proposing a new ordinance that would dedicate the first Tuesday of each month to workshop sessions. Currently workshops are held after council meetings, and often do not start until 10 p.m. or later.

I think the late start of workshop sessions has been a problem, but there are bigger problems with the workshops that the ordinance does not address. The workshops, I have noticed, actually are ways to circumvent citizen input. They do this in two ways.

First, citizens generally have not been allowed to speak at workshops. The common pattern has been for the Mayor and/or Council to invite guests (e.g. the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the DOT, etc.) who usually give a presentation and are then questioned by the Council. The only recent workshop I can recall that allowed citizen input was the second workshop we had on the Convention Center.

Second and equally troubling is the fact that the Council often gives "direction" to the city staff at the workshops which have the force of resolutions. For example, when the Department of Community Development originally proposed a TIF financing model for the Convention Center, they did it at the "direction" of the Council in workshop session. Many other examples could be provided.

Whether we have workshop meetings on the first Tuesdays, keep them where they currently are, or create another alternative, we have to do something to make sure they feature genuine citizen input. Moreover, we have to make sure that the Council is not using the workshops as a way to provide direction to the staff without having to actually vote on those directions.