Rethinking Government - Part 2

Yesterday we looked at some of the problems the Council faces when it tries to examine Council policies at the upcoming meeting on Tuesday. The problems identified were –

• · Voigts Void - the long list of issues waiting to be discussed
• · Meeting length too long or too short
• · Cancelled meetings
• · Inaccurate information given during meetings
• · Incomplete reports prior to meetings
• · No or inadequate follow-up
• · No sense of mission
• · Mission incomplete – not getting what we asked for
• · Conduct unbecoming on the part of Council members

Today we want to explore some possible solutions to some of these problems. Let’s start with the easy ones first.

Improving the Atmosphere

The City Hall is a place where people come because they are concerned with the quality of life in the City. It should be a welcoming place and no one deserves to be treated as poorly as Scott Voigts and Andy Hamilton treated our residents last year. Looking back at the year I have to confess that I remained silent a little too long in the hopes that they would see the errors of their ways and auto-correct. I was wrong, and began intervening to stop their offensive behavior. I even had to enlist the help of the City Attorney in this endeavor. Going forward I will do what I can do to conduct myself professionally and will be very vigilant when I see breaches of decorum or breaches of the law. As members of our community, I’d ask each of you to conduct yourselves appropriately. I believe it is essential that you feel free to laugh, applaud, talk among each other, etc. However, cat calls, hoots, and derisive comments do not a good meeting make.

Meeting Length

There are several things we can do to improve the meeting length issue. For one thing, we can stick to the rules. Years ago the City set out guidelines for how much time can be spent on discussing any item, but under recent leadership, the time limits have been adjusted to increase the time spent on items that appeal to one group’s political persuasion.

One way to take advantage of short meetings is to have on hand some items that are teed up and ready to go in case time allows. These can be agendized so that the legal requirements are met. In 2015 we had meetings end as early as 8:35 and 8:36, and more than half a dozen ended well before 10 pm. The “Voigts Void” could have been closed if we had this system in place.

The past year had more meetings go beyond 10:30 pm than ever before. In fact, meetings went beyond 11 pm and some went beyond Midnight. If you look back at those agendas, it was clear before the meetings started that these were going to be very long meetings. We need to do a better job by not putting two or three major issues on the agenda for the same night.

Follow-up

As difficult as it may be to imagine, The Council has no way of keeping track of what’s coming up, what’s been postponed or what’s been re-scheduled or when. Combine this lack of tracking with the Voigts’ Void and you have a situation in which it’s likely that issues will get overlooked. This can have all sorts of ramifications, since government is a dynamic system, and problems in one area will likely show up in other areas. But the solution is so simple it’s almost embarrassing to mention. The Council needs to have a master list of what is happening with timelines associated with the objectives. I never worked in any agency or company that didn‘t have this.

Prioritization

With an adequate follow-up system in place, the Council needs to be more involved in setting priorities, rather than assume that staff priorities are identical with Council priorities. This should be done every time a new item is added. It should be given a priority from 1 to 5, along with an expected time to achieve the objective. Some idea of what is expected and the detail should also be provided because, in the past, what the Council asked for and what we received were not always in sync. Along with many other reasons, the wide diversity in education, experience, and achievement among the Council members means that what one person considers a study is another person’s anecdote.

Let the People Talk

In addition to making our Council meetings more conducive to people attending and speaking, we need to do a much better job getting input from citizens. What do citizens want? In 2016 we should be using opinion polls on our City website to assess resident concerns and use this information in our decision making. Representative government is best when it actually represents. Right now we have 3 Council members who vote as a block on almost every issue, but I’m not sure that they are representing the interests of the people as much as they represent special interests or a very limited and extreme part of the political landscape. Yet with no real pulse on what the citizen’s want, we really can’t be sure. In 2016 we need to do a better job getting wide-spread citizen input.

Let’s see if we can’t implement some of these changes into the system to get government working better.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on Jan 30 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.