Ooh! Secret meeting!
Some Grand Forks City Council members toured Gateway Drive early this morning. Dakota noted this and said the city failed to give public notice.
I called Council member Bob Brooks and he said that he doesn't disagree with her criticism, though it does appear everything was legal. That's because only three council members attended: Bob, Hal Gershman and Curt Kreun. Three isn't enough for a quorum — four is — though Mayor Mike Brown did invite the entire council to attend. Had they done so, the tour would have been on legally shaky ground.
The situation is kind of a "gray area," as Bob said. The group putting on the tour is called the Gateway Drive Committee. Bob heads it and is the only council member. The rest of the members are city staff and Gateway business people. Usually, the committee's meetings are not widely publicized in the same way that meetings with private businesses seeking city services aren't. Let's say a developer wants to talk about getting annexed into the city with city planner Brad Gengler, there wouldn't be a public notice requirement.
But, at the same time, the Gateway Drive Committee deals with an entire business district so it would appear to be of general interest to the public. I think I'm taking Dakota's side on this one even though everything is legal.
I'll also note that there have been meetings that I weren't posted on the city Web site. There have also been instances of four council members chit-chatting in front of City Hall after council meetings. Obviously they're not hiding anything — I could've stood there and covered the chit-chat — but that's an illegal meeting if you want to be strict about it. Since they talk shop a lot of the time there's the possibility that they're agreeing to policies outside of official channels, which would be a sneaky, not nice thing to do.
Since we're on the topic, I asked Bob why it's taking so darn long to clean up Gateway Drive. He lamented that he'll grow old before it's all over and launched into a detailed explanation about all the things that need to be done to screen the unsightly junkyards west of town. It pretty much boils down to money and the lack of it. Bob reminded me of an idea mentioned some time ago to pool the city's beautification fund each year and spend it on only one project.
Dealing with the junkyards is important, Bob said, because the city can't get other unsightly businesses on Gateway to clean up if the most unsightly businesses are allowed to stay that way.
I called Council member Bob Brooks and he said that he doesn't disagree with her criticism, though it does appear everything was legal. That's because only three council members attended: Bob, Hal Gershman and Curt Kreun. Three isn't enough for a quorum — four is — though Mayor Mike Brown did invite the entire council to attend. Had they done so, the tour would have been on legally shaky ground.
The situation is kind of a "gray area," as Bob said. The group putting on the tour is called the Gateway Drive Committee. Bob heads it and is the only council member. The rest of the members are city staff and Gateway business people. Usually, the committee's meetings are not widely publicized in the same way that meetings with private businesses seeking city services aren't. Let's say a developer wants to talk about getting annexed into the city with city planner Brad Gengler, there wouldn't be a public notice requirement.
But, at the same time, the Gateway Drive Committee deals with an entire business district so it would appear to be of general interest to the public. I think I'm taking Dakota's side on this one even though everything is legal.
I'll also note that there have been meetings that I weren't posted on the city Web site. There have also been instances of four council members chit-chatting in front of City Hall after council meetings. Obviously they're not hiding anything — I could've stood there and covered the chit-chat — but that's an illegal meeting if you want to be strict about it. Since they talk shop a lot of the time there's the possibility that they're agreeing to policies outside of official channels, which would be a sneaky, not nice thing to do.
Since we're on the topic, I asked Bob why it's taking so darn long to clean up Gateway Drive. He lamented that he'll grow old before it's all over and launched into a detailed explanation about all the things that need to be done to screen the unsightly junkyards west of town. It pretty much boils down to money and the lack of it. Bob reminded me of an idea mentioned some time ago to pool the city's beautification fund each year and spend it on only one project.
Dealing with the junkyards is important, Bob said, because the city can't get other unsightly businesses on Gateway to clean up if the most unsightly businesses are allowed to stay that way.
posted by Tu-Uyen at 11:09 PM
2 Comments:
While the junkyards might be the biggest eyesore, there are others in town that are bad. Next time you travel down Gateway, take a look at all the weeds around the businesses between Columbia and Washington. It seems to me that getting rid of these would be a small (but simple) step to making it a better looking area.
Instead of just getting rid of the weeds...let's get rid of most of those buildings while we're at it...
Why the heck can't some business owners clean up their act!
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