Zoning and Land Use Advisory Council Meeting Format
Sent to Joe Moore, Alderman, 49th Ward, Chicago, IL via email
Dear Joe,
Thank you for facilitating our attendance at last night’s Zoning and Land Use Advisory Council meeting yesterday evening. It was very interesting to get a glimpse into how the process works.
A couple of follow-up questions: First, the format of the new business part of the meeting is rather cumbersome for public observers. As you know, the format right now is that the committee goes into closed deliberation after each new business presentation. I wonder whether you would consider changing the format so that all new business presentations are made back to back, and then allow the committee to go into closed deliberation on all new business. It does not appear to me that this revision to the format would place any additional burden on either the council or the presenters, and it would be a great improvement for observers from the public.
My next question is wider ranging. I wonder whether you would consider altering the format of these meetings to conform to the Illinois Open Meetings Act (5 ILCS 120). I understand that the Zoning and Land Use Advisory Council meetings may not be subject to these requirements, but I think it would be a wonderful gesture toward the citizens of this ward if you adopted some or all of these practices.
As you may know, Gary Fuschi and I have created a community blog http://rogersparkreview.blogspot/. We are dedicated to open communication with our readers and as part of this policy of openness I plan to post this letter on the site. I would also like to post your reply, with your permission.
Thanks very much for your attention.
Sincerely,
4 Comments:
As a follow up to this post, I want to direct your attention to a document that Hugh put in the comments to the post "Another Episode of the Extensive Community Review" Open Meeting Act Complaint Against Alderman Joe Moore (Sorry - I haven't figured out how to link comments together yet...)
In this response to a formal community complaint about the openness of the Zoning and Land Use Council meetings, Joe argued that having deliberations outside the presence of the public "promotes greater candor and more fruitful discussion among members, resulting in a more useful discussion".
This sounds pretty reasonable until you ask the question about whether this is a pre-emptive policy or whether the public actually did something, at some point, to warrent the meetings being closed. Any long time residents care to comment on that?
(Regardless of why the meetings are closed...I'm sort of hoping that the tide is turning, and people's perceptions can become less adversarial, but we'll see...)
... Joe argued that having deliberations outside the presence of the public"promotes greater candor and more fruitful discussion among members, resulting in a more useful discussion".
I'm confused, is this quote from Cheney or Moore?
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Now, now Hugh...let's keep some perspective...
RPR is only frying the little fish here...not the evil leviathan.
Our ambitions are modest...relatively speaking...
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