City Council to Make Meetings More Accessible

As a , our goal is to maximize transparency and resident accessibility to City Council proceedings and decision-making. To this end, we started televising our budget workshops on Channel 10. I send out these e-blasts discussing current events and decisions.  

Last week, we began work on a City of Highland Park Facebook page to provide up-to-date announcements about the City as well as City Commissions. 

Improved accessibility and transparency are coming to our City Council meeting format as well. Our new proposed Council meeting and agenda posting schedule will provide more time for notice, more time for resident response and increased accessibility.  

Today, we will "test drive" our new format. 

In the past, we started at 4:30 p.m. in the pre-session room with Closed Session meetings (to discuss litigation, personnel and land sale and acquisition matters per the Illinois Open Meetings Act), followed by open Committee of the Whole meetings to discuss major policy matters. We then moved into the Council Chambers to start City Council meetings at 7:30, which were televised. 

Because we were in the pre-session room, we could not televise the Committee of the Whole meetings. Moreover, agendas were posted only a few days before the Monday meetings making it difficult for people to schedule a trip to the meeting or to organize responses to agenda items, if desired. To address many of these issues, a new schedule was created that we hope will make it easier for residents to access our proceedings.

Specifically, we will have our Closed Sessions from 5 p.m. until 6 p.m.  We will then start our City Council meetings at 6:00 in the City Council chambers. These meetings will be televised on Channel 10 and streamed live at www.cityhpil.com.

The first hour will be Council discussions of policy related matters (formerly Committee of the Whole items). Starting at 7 p.m. we will follow our usual City Council meeting format, including Recognitions and Business From the Public.

We will now post most of the City Council Agenda approximately 10 days prior to the meeting. Due to business cycles and community development meeting cycles, it may be necessary at times to add items to the agenda closer to the City Council meeting date, yet they will still be more than 48 hours prior to the meeting per the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

We will be evaluating this new meeting format and will discuss possible other changes as needed. We hope you like the new format and find that it makes our proceedings more accessible.  It's your City!

Nancy Rotering
Highland Park Mayor