Last night I attended a political fund raiser for County Councilperson Greg Fox. It was extremely well attended given the fact that it was a) Sunday night and b) rainy cold and miserable.
I heard from several different people at the event that GGP has already met with most of the council members privately to share their vision for Columbia's town center. I hope that is true. I also hope that, if it is true, it will stop this silly posturing by the Columbia Council and the village boards over open meetings.
Again, I have no objection to public meetings. They play an important role in formulating public policy. Similarly, private meetings play an important role as well as they don't allow for posturing for the press and tend to focus more intensely on the subject matter.
Just say "no" to the horse park!
ReplyDeleteCA is dysfunctional. Each body has been a reflection of leadership. The Council has had a mediator and generally nice guy (even if a bit liberal) in Calvin Ball in charge. CA has had "different" leadership in Barbara Russell who took a 6 week vacation as soon as she won. That set the tone for her majesty's "leadership".
ReplyDeleteAnd I have no objection to private meetings. They're great - for private business. But public business should be subject to public scrutiny and any meetings to undertake such business should be public meetings.
ReplyDeleteHaving some of the Town Center Master Plan proposal work being done in private by a subset of the community, having that subset invite another subset of the community to confer about currently private details of what's to become the public plan, and many of that second subset being office holders in organizations beholden to conduct their public or private organization's business openly are all reasons to be concerned with the method with which the Town Center Master Plan revision process is unfolding.
Besides the press, it would be interesting to know what other segments of the community haven't been invited to these private meetings and haven't had the opportunity at this stage to provide feedback. Unfortunately, it seems that, too, is private.