Oy, Batman, a seven hour meeting?
First, a little housekeeping. I’ve got some ideas for posts that I’m thinking about putting together as running features.
Possibilities:
1. A list of city council topics from the past year that got introduced, and then were put on hold, and never came back. It’s so easy to forget about unfinished business – I want to keep track of it.
2. A list of the important things that Council did over the past year (both good and bad), and how councilmembers voted. Seems useful for election season!
3. A list of projects that Council approved to get built, and now move into the mushy limbo phase where we can’t remember or keep track of what’s been approved.
That last one is hard. Like, how exactly would something ever move off the list, unless you drive by in 2032 and notice it was finally built? How do you keep a list like this from just being an inexorable slog of addresses on little roads in weird far-flung sprawling areas? Should it be organized by chronology or part of town? The more I think about it, the more exhausting it seems. I dunno.
I picture updating these lists once or twice a year. (Sure would’ve been nice if I’d thought to do this while Council was on vacation!)
Onto last Tuesday’s meeting!
Hour 0:00 – 1:00: Citizen Comment
Hour 1:00 – 5:00: Four long hours of zoning cases. Don’t worry, I boiled it down to four hours of reading about zoning cases.
Hours 5:00 – 7:30: You’ll come for the pot, but you’ll stay for the abortions! (I actually think these are both serious, despite the flippant tagline.) Plus city council raises and a new city park.
Just saying: the council adjourned at 1:30 am. Before the 6 pm council meeting, they held a city council workshop starting at 3 pm. That means city council sat in those seats, more or less, for 10.5 hours. What on earth.
Why not cap city council meetings at 3 hours, and adjourn until Wednesday, and then put in 3 more hours? Or meet weekly? All I’m saying is that every city has a city council, but not every city council meets for seven hours at a time.
The San Marxist 
It would be really nice to keep track of the things that are slated to be built, checking them off when they are actually built. It would also be nice if there were a record of things passed by city council that were acted upon by the city. Or not. I suspect there are quite a number of things that have fallen by the wayside. Much like the vote that stated that Cape’s Dam should be destroyed and it never was.
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Thanks! I’m going to try to chip away at these, starting this week. At least keep a record of the more recent timeline.
On the topic of Cape’s Dam, I don’t know if you ever saw this, but I attempted to explain the backstory, as best as I understand it. I wanted to write it out so that when it comes up in the future, I already have the background on hand, since it’s so long and complicated. You had a much closer view than me, so if something’s off, let me know!
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