The City of Whittier has two city meetings a month were the people of the community are welcome to attend. One of their city council meetings was held on April 26 at 6:30pm. The council members are Owner Newcomer, Cathy Warner and Bob Henderson. The Mayor Pro tem is Joe Vinatieri and the Mayor of Whittier is Fernando Dutra. There was a good amount of public attendance, but the attendance died out after recess. Public participation was not effective or really used throughout the meeting. The public comments part of the meeting was where the public’s voice was most heard. At the beginning of the council there was a good amount of people in the public speaking part of the meeting. The people knew what they were there for, some were organized and some improvised as they went. They all had time to speak, some might have gotten more time than others, but everyone had the chance to speak. I think giving other people more time to speak was not fair because of whom they were or if they were praising someone. For …show more content…
The voting was conducted by “yay or nay” method. It was a simple but effective method because there weren’t many people so you could hear the disagreement and or agreement. About seven out of the eleven people voted agreeing on the subject of having KaBoom and Warner Music group Inc. designing, planning and building a playground feature at York Field. The people who disagreed argued that why should York Field park need to be improved if its already a nice park, let’s improve a park that isn’t as good. The Whittier parks and rec leader came out to speak, he mentions that these are donations, we can’t force anyone to donate to a park they don’t want to. Robert Dahl’s theory was correct because if the citizens didn’t participate then it’s not a democracy. Even if the citizens didn’t get there way today if they don’t speck up then they’ll get taken
On Monday, April 13th, 2009, I visited the Culver City city council meeting, and found that they operate using a council-manager form of government. For a city with a population of about 38,000, this type of governmental structure is fairly common, and I was not surprised to see it in action in a community where the median household income is around $56,000 a year. Culver City is also a culturally rich community with a 60 percent Caucasian population, and a quarter of the residents are either of African American or Asian decent. The mayor, D. Scott Malsin, is one of five members on the council, and his term as mayor is on a rotating basis. Having been to a Hermosa Beach city council meeting with a similar council-manager structure, I knew
One thing of significance that I learned about at the city council meeting was meeting procedure. When I first arrived a pre-meeting workshop about annexation was occurring. After the regular meeting began we started with the Pledge of Allegiance. Next roll call of the council members was taken. Dallas Center has five council members: Mike Kidd, David Bagby, Kurt Pion,. Following roll call was an action to approve the agenda, which was approved. Next up was public communications and concerns. I was surprised that each person only has two minutes to talk about all the issues they
The governing core of South San Francisco is the city council, which creates municipal laws and the overall policy, decides how to expend treasury, assigns members to all consultative local businesses and represents the city officially. The city council`s members are Richard A. Garbarino as a mayor, Mark N. Addiego as a vice mayor, Pradeep Gupta, Karyl Matsumoto and Liza Normandy.
A reoccurring conflict throughout this case assessment is the mayor’s ignorance to the policies that he is
Of course, during meetings, many questions are sure to arise about the same factors. Most people want know what will be done on roadway conditions, what will be done about the cleaning of the parks, etc. One of the biggest, and very surprising, issues brought up recently by the Common Council is a chicken ordinance for Warsaw. In a unanimous vote, the Warsaw Planning Commission has given their approval to allow chickens within the city limits. However, the Council voted “no” on the ordinance that, if passed, would have allowed a select number of residents to raise and maintain chickens on their property inside the city
The experience going to the council meeting was great and I would imagine that the items on the agenda had a great deal to do with that. The topics I found the most interesting revolved around public nudity, serving alcohol in public, spending grant money, a gun ordinance, and polling the public about being taxed. The agenda item revolving around public nudity took up most of the time. Currently, Eureka doesn't have a ordinance in place to give police authority to arrest citizens who are nude in public when it isn't a sexual act. The chief of police gave example of a person doing Tai Chi in a public park nude. The police were called and couldn't do anything short of asking him to put his clothes on. There was concern among a few council members
On September 9, 2014 I attended the Glendale City Council meeting which was held at the Council Chamber which is located on the 2nd floor of the Glendale City Hall, Room 200, 613 East Broadway, Glendale, California. The meeting commenced at 6 p.m. and lasted for approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes. Several policy proposals were made and discussed in this particular meeting. This paper is aimed at discussing the various policy proposals made and debated at this meeting with a view to establishing whether they are acceptable or unacceptable to the Glendale electorate. It is, however, essential to provide a brief background of the City of Glendale before embarking on a discussion of policy proposals.
During the city commission meeting votes were taken. The voting would occur verbally. All those in favor would have to say the word “I” right after they asked if they were in favor. It occurred often during the whole meeting. Most of the time there was one of the council members approving and second as well and they would move on to another subject right after they finished voting. There was one time where one of the commissioners neglected himself from saying any comments or being involved with the issue in any type of way. I did not understand what his reasons were for this
At the meeting they addressed issues I had no idea about and discussed voting for proposed amendments to Georgia’s constitution. One possible amendment that was especially interesting was that of government takeover of public schools, keeping them and not giving them back to the community. As I looked on the sample ballot I noticed the use of diction that would confuse most people into voting yes to something that would ultimately be a bad decision. Had I not attended this meeting I personally would have probably voted yes to this amendment without knowing what it was I were agreeing
While many residents are in support of the formation of the park, there are many people on the other side. Just ask Bill Theriault. He is worried that if Weston puts money to this dog park it will take money away for many
The Dahlonega City Hall was crowded on the evening of March 1st 2010. The seats were full, except for at the very front, and the standing room was filled almost out the door. The crowd, mostly made up of students, leaned in to hear as the voices of the City Council members faded in and out of the faltering sound system. The six City Council members and the mayor sat along a bench as if they were the judges at a hearing. Because of the ongoing discussions and the crowd, I thought I had arrived a few minutes late; but I was able to find a seat in the front two rows. Despite how packed the small room was there were plenty of empty seats in the front. I had thought the meeting was well on its way by the way conversation was going and
There are numerous techniques the mayor can use to create effective teamwork among city employees one of which is an atmosphere of accountability and trust as a common goal. The American Management Association (2014) stated, “When people work together in a climate of trust and responsibility toward a common goal, they put aside turf issues and politics and focus on the tasks to be done. This
The meeting continued with the Joint Consent Calendar, the consent calendar is a grouping of routine matters to be acted on in one motion. There were six items considered and recommended actions taken anywhere from issues related to utilities to professional services. At the end of this presentation it was open to public hearing providing any concerned resident an opportunity to speak. This was followed by consent ordinances which city staff members began to speak about Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and its draft citizen participation plan for years 2015-2019. This was followed by an ordinance for the Civic Plaza which would limit the use of skateboards, bicycles, and leashed animals during special events held at this location. Following these issues the council would make a decision which would be placed on record for public view. New business was proposed where an approval of long ranged property management was projected, but they motioned to push this event forward to the next meeting due to the absence of a council member who was more familiar with the issue.
However, there were many that were opposed to the plan. In general, foreign imports coming in such great quantities could undermine British industry. More specifically, the site itself was questioned. Though the park offered enough space, the British were very protective of their parks “The Parks committee thought that the fair would lower property values of the highest portion of town, as well as permanently “disfigure” the natural area”. (1)
I chose to attend a city council meeting for this assignment and was very surprised at what I witnessed. The city council served an important purpose and the meeting actually accomplished many important goals. Among the interesting things that I saw at the council meeting were the people who attended, the people who presented, the people who sat on the council, and the subjects that were being voted upon in the meeting.