Photo courtesy of cirrusimage.com
((YAWN))
I stopped over at the Environmental Commission meeting at City Hall at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday.
By the time it was 8:10 p.m. I was really "bugged" and had to sneak out of there (well, I had been to the School Board meeting prior to the EC meeting).
Remember back at the beginning of November, when Kevin Fischer said he had run into Kristen Wilhelm, Chairperson of the EC, and she just "smiled" and said something like "we never do anything," after Kevin asked her what was going on with the EC?
Well, after hearing the "tapes" of the meeting from last month, and experiencing over an hour of the meeting this month, I can see why nothing ever gets done.
Kristen Wilhelm does not know how to run a meeting. I have nothing against her as an individual. She seems like a good person. That's not what this is about. It's just there is so much whining about City Government and whining about the lack of funds for the EC (which appears to be zero, so go make your copies at City Hall and stop whining about it).
And to hear that something as basic and simple as Policies and Procedures has been in the works since May of 2001, and they are still not approved. Hello .... it's 2008 in a couple days!
Then there is so much bloviating during the meetings. Some of it seems way beyond the scope of what our EC is capable of doing. I almost wonder if the Mayor and Alderman realize this and are sitting there chuckling to themselves as this is going on.
See, I really think the problem with this group is that they don't want to take the time to meet in special committee meetings. Maybe they are just too busy to commit to the Environmental Commission they care so much about. Because what they really should be doing is breaking up into small committees during the month to do the long projects, then coming back to the main meeting to quickly report and vote on them. Sounds simple, right?
That is what a Policy and Procedures Committee would have done. Meet to go over, line by line, of the proposed policies, then present it to the Commission as a whole, and then finally to the Common Council. Instead, they had the nerve to sit there and start going over the policies and procedures line by line during a regular meeting! I was shocked.
I was the only citizen in the audience. Could you imagine if the place was full? Also, the Mayor was there. I had to leave ... what they were doing was just too much to comprehend. I was embarrassed for them. I was once on a By-laws committee. It's a simple procedure when two people work on it. It does not take six years! The Mayor was rolling his eyes when he asked how long this has been taking.
By the way, they have decided the change the name of the Environmental Commission to the Conservation Commission (CC). It's a much friendlier name, don't you think? Titles are so important. I know it changes my impression of how I feel about the Environmental Commission.
