I would agree that although this was this best discussion re: annexation I have heard at the council level, it would be impossible to report with any comprehensive analysis. So I would also urge listening to this on the KYMN archive of council meetings if someone is interested.

Thanks for sitting through this long meeting; I must admit I was beginning to nod off!

Shows how old I am, but I thought the only way a grade was changed was by the evaluation of the teacher who issued it?
Are teachers now ’second-guessed’ by persons who have not experienced the student’s classwork?

Enlighten me, please…

What is the goal #4 that has still to be discussed? and there was also some mention of not completing the discussion of Goal #1. Could you please explain a bit more on those Council Goals?

There was one statement by the City Administrator that I didn’t think should have gone by the council with complete face-value acceptance (I watched at home on KYMN) and that was that ‘they’ have made all the personnel cuts they can (10% in the last year, I think was said) and that further cuts would have to be in services to citizens.
I think a statement like that needs to be supported; i.e., we have some staff at city hall that could possibly be replaced by contracted services… would that be cost effective or can only cuts across the entire city come up with the needed deficit dollars?

I must admit that although I understand there have been wage freezes, or step increase freezes , for city employees, many people are taking cuts in their salaries, going to fewer work days, or if building or business owners, not receiving revenues at previous levels…
Should we consider asking city employees to also cut back their income, when many others are experiencing that?

I requested annexation agreement map #5 be shown so people could identify the western half of Gill/Prawer which is not subject to annexation. Staff was unable to project it at the time. It was flashed on and off later with no comment.

Township residents left after the vote, being unaware our supervisors would be called forward to participate in the stormwater discussion in the work session which followed.

They didn’t evaluate the 4 goals per se. Looking instead at the lists of “accomplishments” they ranked these according to their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. They then chose what they thought were the most important of these. This was odd because each item on the list lost its SWOC desiignation in the process, but became fodder for the net step – net year’s “goals”.
Perhaps the facilitators had to alter their methodology midway, due to lack of time, or, perhaps, they were working with a document which didn’t fit their methology.
Take a look at the document they were working from and see that the nomenclature is a bit confusing.

Maybe what they did will be clearer to you when you see the facilitators’ “massaged” version of the many little slips of paper they generated.

Betsey has blogged about how helpful the evening was for her. I wonder how other councilors feel. As I reported above, if they came up with a helpful product, it was time well spend. If not, perhaps just having time to talk and process their various views will help them be more productive during 2010. Certainly, they know one another better than then and know more about their individual and collective SWOC than they did at last year’s goal setting day.

This is past unacceptable; who will do anything about it if the LWV does not?

Then… who might a “neutral entity” be? I can think of no group except possibly the LWV.

It is certainly not the Council, given the remarks made by previous councilor Cashman to the then Charter Commission Chair, Alex Beeby, or the more recent adversarial comments by C’s. Denison and Pokorney.

I find it unfortunate that this important issue came up on the same night as the Waterford conflict; I feel that Councilors had to pick and choose their ‘fights’…