Opinion · Letters
A letter to the incoming council
You will be asked to approve things quickly and told the timing is out of your hands; it is worth knowing now that it usually is not.
I sat on a community advisory panel for six years, so I have watched a number of you learn this the slow way.
You will be handed a report on the Friday for a Tuesday vote and told that deferral costs money. Sometimes that is true. Most times the deadline is one the administration set and can move. Ask which it is, and ask in open session so the answer is on the record. You will only need to do this three or four times before the reports start arriving earlier.
The second thing: the minutes will not record what you were told in camera, only that you were told something. If a decision turns on information you cannot repeat, say so out loud before you vote. You are permitted to say that much, and it is the only signal a resident reading the minutes will ever get.
The third thing, which nobody will tell you: the staff are not your opponents. They are working with the direction they were given, usually by a council that sat before you, and most of them would like clearer direction than they have. A question asked in public is not an accusation, and if you frame it as one you will get careful answers for four years.
To the residents reading: write to your councillor before the 14th, not after. Afterwards is a complaint. Before is a vote.
The Standard is funded by readers. No advertising from anyone the paper covers. Corrections policy.
