The Edina City Council decided to hold
the town hall meeting as a way to give
residents an open forum with city
officials. Last year, some residents
complained that city rules about what
they could comment on at regular
council meetings were too restrictive.

Council members, pointing to Eden
Prairie’s success with town hall
meetings, thought a less formal
setting might encourage some of the
city’s more bashful residents to have
a dialogue with city officials.

Who wants to run an ad in the News or on KYMN when they can get the Council’s ear directly with very little effort? The process is so open that you don’t even have to be a citizen to speak.

One (of many) of the advantages of open mic is that it’s the only way for citizens to officially address the council and have the entire citizenry (via NTV, DVD, KYMN) hear their comments, too. And then because the comments are public, subsequent commenters (at that meeting or subsequent meetings) can fine-tune their comments based on what earlier speakers said. Speaking to a council in a group setting is powerful.

So I’m just proposing another way for this to happen, one that takes advantage of the online medium and accommodates to people’s busy schedules, and acknowledges the fact that fear of public speaking is the #1 ranked fear among the general public.

My comments on the podcast weren’t well-thought thru!

I think you were just working through the possibilities in your mind , Griff, but your podcast suggestion of a real time online comment to councilors during a council meeting is, IMO, a lack of recognition of the amount of areas they are trying to manage during the meeting.

It is obvious, in meetings, of the difficulty of keeping all your thoughts in order, keeping all your papers in order, having all eyes focussed on you on that dais, knowing all the focus directed on you by the cable TV watchers of the meeting, and trying to do ALL within the sometimes rather obscure, and often not followed, Robert’s Rules of Order.
The Mayor has an additional heavy burden of managing/chairing the meeting process.

To add to that not inconsequential burden, the awareness, reading, thought process involved with monitoring online comments would make the task less than productive, as well as certainly slow the meeting down, and ‘everyone’ seems to be so concerned about the meeting length.

Sorry… bad idea.

On the engagement issue, Obama talked about government officials engaging ordinary people. But, he also talked about a code of ethics which would limit access by those who already have substantial access. Perhaps most importantly, he talked about the individuals serving the common good with or without government involvement as being the best service to the nation.

I also liked his invocation of God at the appropriate moments. Generally, Republicans assume that God will do too much; Democrats assume that God can do too little. Good government must assume neither.

The current limitation: On Fridays before a Council meeting/work session, City staff publish the agenda and supporting documents as PDFs to the City web site. (They’re also available at City Hall and the Library.) Citizens who want to PUBLICLY comment on those agenda items must show up at the Council meeting and wait for either the open mic segment or the public comment segment on a specific agenda item. People who work during that time, have family obligations or other conflicts, or who are afraid of speaking in public are out of luck.  They only have the option to contact one or more council members individually (phone, email, F2F).

So one possible way to address this (I’m making this up as I go):

• An online comment tool attached to the web page of the Agenda where citizens can submit their input on an agenda item.
• The comments would be publicly displayed in linear fashion in the order that they were submitted. 
• Just like Open Mic, only one comment per citizen would be allowed (no back and forth discussion like here). 
• People would be expected to submit their email address with their street address and phone number so that comments could be verified before being published if there was a concern about veracity. A slightly more elaborate procedure could be created in which citizens are issued a UserID and password in which their identity is verified ONCE and thereafter, they can post regularly without staff having to confirm identities.
• Comments would stop being taken by a certain time on Monday.
• Councilors could check the comments online anytime prior to the meeting.  
• A PDF of the comments could be entered into the record or at least a list of the people who submitted comments.  Or maybe a staff person could read the names of those submitting comments on each agenda item.
• Since the comments would be publicly viewable, they could be used to help further online discussions (SNIP! LINK!) here on LG, on N.org, Nfld News, or any blog in Northfield’s civic blogosphere.
  

So what are the pros and cons of this idea? How could it be improved on?

However, Obama is spot-on. Government is the collective of its citizens. It is we governing ourselves.

The subset of individuals in ‘authority’ at any one point in time will be comprised of talents and experiences that are a subset of those in the community, not a superset.

So, the subset will benefit from input received by members of the superset, provided they have good judgment as one of their skills.

Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.

Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people about how decisions are made. It means recognizing that government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know. And that’s why, as of today, I’m directing members of my administration to find new ways of tapping the knowledge and experience of ordinary Americans — scientists and civic leaders, educators and entrepreneurs — because the way to solve the problem of our time is — the way to solve the problems of our time, as one nation, is by involving the American people in shaping the policies that affect their lives.

You have said you have coached chess club for several years; I think that’s a great thing to do. Besides the value to the kids’ skill development, you are building an intergenerational relationship that should be productive.
But as to that ‘public engagement’ versus David Suderman, for instance, spending untold hours researching the history of the west side in his quest for knowledge on the Way Park issue, I would hate to say that one is more valuable than the other. Coaching chess versus contributing a huge volume of research to the Historic Society; I don’t think those are values that can be weighed against each other, except by each person’s interest.

The idea that the Friends of Way Park had a selfish interest in regaining the parkland really shows a lack of understanding of the entire process from the beginning. Chris Ennis walked the whole town, in the winter months, obtaining signatures (6 or 700) from north, south , east, and west… all over this community… from people who wanted the hospital land to revert to the park use that the Way family had specified, if the hospital should move. That was not a selfish act.

Both the founding group, and the now established board, have multiple people on them who have served the community in many ways,on boards and commissions, as elected officials, as teachers in our schools, etc.

You can argue the issue of the street closing; you can argue against the principle of taking the opportunity to double a park in a 100 year old neighborhood, but in my opinion, it is wrong to demean the motives of the people who have now worked for years to return this gift to the community.

I am also of the opinion that the quality of the public engagement would be better if it were not so easy to be engaged. My experience is that the additional engagement is usually directed toward a special interest, not the greater good of Northfield.

Erica: To the extent that the City Council members can force input to go through the representatives rather than having every issue be a Council issue, public engagement, especially for the under-represented, will be better.