I attended the first hour and the last hour of Monday’s Northfield City Council goal setting session held at the Northfield Hospital Board room from 5-10 pm. The husband/wife team of Richard Fursman and Irina Fursman, Global Synergy Group (GSG), were the meeting facilitators.
For reference, see the 2009 Council Vision and Goals and 2009 Council Goals and Initiatives.
See the photo album of the meeting (mostly photos of Council-generated content posted on the walls), the large slideshow, or this small slideshow:
LWV Observer Jane McWilliams was there the entire time and has blogged her goals session report.
City Administrator Joel Walinski wrote in his Friday Memo yesterday:
Councilor Betsey Buckheit posted these comments about the meeting in her January recap blog post:
No reporters from the Northfield News nor KYMN were there.
LWV observer Jane McWilliams appended this comment to her report:
If you look at the photos of where the councilors placed their dots to indicate priorities (starting here), the prioritized list is:
I think the facilitators made a big mistake by not lumping several of the public communications-related cards (Goal #1) into one connected lump (see the photo of the cards here) before the councilors placed their priority dots.
They did this for the LDC-related cards (Goal #2). See that photo here.
As a result, IMHO, only the card for updating the city website got 3 votes when public communications/listening/transparency etc collectively is a huge issue.
No matter what any of us think of this facilitated ‘process’, Betsey Buckheit has said it best; read her blog.