January 13, 2005

First Council Agenda Of Potter's 'Strong Mayor' Experiment

Reflects The Beginning Of 'Bureau Innovation Project'

Now, we understand that Mayor Tom Potter's assumption of control over all City bureaus for three to six months isn't necessarily considered a "strong mayor" experiment by his office. But since we're argued before that it will be viewed that way in the inevitable discussion of the City's commission form of government, we're going to keep referring to it that way.

That said, this is just a quick item to point readers to next week's City Council agenda, the first to clearly reflect Potter's all-bureaus portfolio.

Normally, agenda items are listed under the Council member responsible for them. You'll note that every single item on next week's agenda is listed under Potter. What's more, since all City bureaus now operate out of his office, each item now is further broken down by the bureau, office, or agency in question.

Nothing earth-shattering. We just found the visual manifestation of the so-called Bureau Innovation Project to be vaguely, strangely compelling and worth pointing out.

Posted at 08:04 PM | PermalinkComments (5) | TrackBacks (0)
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Comments (5)

  1. Chris on 13 Jan 2005

    Just a minor point, but I wonder how the bureau innovation project will affect the ratio of consensus vs. regular agenda items. I hope that, for the sake of good governance and professional council watchers, public discussion of proposed legislation doesn't suffer as a result of streamlined communication inside City Hall. At least the next session looks like it will last longer than 15 minutes (thanks BTW for clarifying that agenda item from yesterday's session).

  2. The One True b!X on 13 Jan 2005

    One thing it's important for people to know is that City Code 3.02.036, under subsection D, provides the following:

    An item designated for the Consent Agenda may be removed from the Consent Agenda by a Council member or any individual prior to Council vote on the Consent Agenda. The request may be in either written or verbal form.

    Note the emphasized words. Anyone can pull an item off of the Consent Agenda simply by asking for it to happen. I'm not sure how many people realize that. It took us quite some time before we discovered that this was the case.

  3. Amanda on 14 Jan 2005

    Seems to me, last year the Council agenda was only posted on-line on Friday afternoon, rather than Thursday. I hope this is a deliberate step towards giving citizens as much notice as possible for preparing to participate in our city government.

  4. The One True b!X on 14 Jan 2005

    You are correct. They atends to show up online on or after 4:00 PM on Fridays. This, I believe, is the second one in a row that has been posted on Thursday instead.

  5. Gary Blackmer on 15 Jan 2005

    The deadline for filing is 5:00 pm on Thursdays and if it's a full agenda my office often has difficulty posting it on Thursday.