Adventures of... Government Study

[shiva]

get ready I never had any idea chickens could be such a big issue. we just went through that. we have 2 areas of town that you can have any kind of a farm animal. cow, horse, pig, it doesn't matter. no restrictions of any kind, but the main area you can't have anything other than cats and dogs, if you follow the ordinance. it says no wild animals, that would mean goldfish or birds just crazy but the way it is. I thought we should change it but got voted down.

[Sarge104]

get ready I never had any idea chickens could be such a big issue. we just went through that. we have 2 areas of town that you can have any kind of a farm animal. cow, horse, pig, it doesn't matter. no restrictions of any kind, but the main area you can't have anything other than cats and dogs, if you follow the ordinance. it says no wild animals, that would mean goldfish or birds just crazy but the way it is. I thought we should change it but got voted down.

It was noted during the (Pro Chicken) meeting that regardless of if they get through the ordinance committee and it passes reading(s) from the city council that the subdivision covenant agreements would not be over ridden. They would still need to go through the developer to get those changes.

[shiva]

It was noted during the (Pro Chicken) meeting that regardless of if they get through the ordinance committee and it passes reading(s) from the city council that the subdivision covenant agreements would not be over ridden. They would still need to go through the developer to get those changes.

that would be a civil matter, we found that it would take a court case to figure out the covenant. we have found that attorneys totally disagree if covenants are legal or not. seems that there are requirements that must be followed for the covenants to remain in force.

[Sarge104]

My apologies for the extended absence, I received a closed beta key for World of Warships and have been whiling the hours away with that for the past month or so. Open beta is going to come around the end of the month and it seems to be a fairly well made online game.

As far as the government study goes we start our interviews with city department heads the beginning of next month. It's been a battle to just get ten questions ready to prepare the mindset of the people we are going to interview but at least traction has been made. I'm proud to say out of the 25 questions that I originally proposed, 8 have made it to the final list of ten.

Additional questions tailored over the next few meetings will help us delve deeper into the respective departments. Should be fun to find out how the city departments think they do things vs how the citizens believe. Slowly but surely it will get done.

[Sarge104]

Greetings team,

I apologize for my extended absence, bad things happened to my health, home, and family. I am happy to say that I am able to still above ground and day by day things get better. First though I will not derail this thread with personal issues and will finally give a final tally of what happened as my stint as a Local Government Study Commissioner:


FOR ADOPTION OF A SELF-GOVERNMENT CHARTER 39% 1,457
FOR THE EXISTING FORM OF GOVERNMENT 61% 2,325
total votes 3,782

After two years of study the Commission decided to:
A. Make the Mayor a voting member of the City Commission, yielding his control of the departments to the City Manager.
B. Instate a City Manager, overseen by the Council
C. Reduce the City Commission by one member, due to the mayor now being a voting member.
D. Open two of the City Commission slots to voting at large. Mayor to remain at large, and rest of Council slots to be filled by ward.

Resistance during our public meetings was mainly over cost of hiring a city manager. Explaining the Charter was not that difficult but getting the information out seemed to be. Despite using radio, paper, and facebook to reach out to the citizens there seemed to be the same questions popping up at the public meetings time and time again. I was most surprised by one young voter coming to the city council meeting and stating:

“I am a registered voter, so I can vote tomorrow, and I would like to know why this city needs a city manager as well as a mayor,”

I read that in the paper and had to shake my head as this was said a day before voting. All I can say is this comment seemed to be in the majority as the voters hit the polls, maybe next time we use the funds available to the commission to offer people money to come to the meetings that we posted and held over the previous two years...lol. In the end our ballot issue failed but many of our suggestions were put into place to help the people communicate more effectively with their local city government. While I'm sad the vote failed I'm happy I was able to effect visible changes in the way the city operates.

I'll go into the suggestions we offered in a new post.