Planning for Council Meetings

What happens at Council meetings can sometimes be substantially different then what staff thought or was told was going to happen. There are all these conversations about who's going to say what and what group is going to show up and request something. Then the meeting happens and nothing goes as planned.

After twenty two years of attending meetings on a weekly basis, I find that the people just do not like throwing their ideas into the public forum. This fear of having your ideas evaluated publicly really creates difficulty generating consensus on a course of action.

I don't blame people for having this fear - I still have it after twenty two years. The environment where people feel comfortable having their ideas evaluated and critiqued is generally not a televised public meeting. Even the private focus groups have agressives and passives that create communication problems and a lack of true consensus.

The amount of staff preparation time that goes into possible council discussion items that never materialize is surely balanced by the discussions that do occur that no staff member was prepared to discuss. The way some of the questions end up being asked does not generate the same type of conversation that was originally anticipated. Again, people's knowledge of government operations can lead to confusion and miscommunication.

I believe that Council members tend to maintain misconceptions about issues because conversations become vague or they did not understand how to properly ask the question. This can lead to conflict between Council members and staff. The Council meeting can sure be a source of pre-meeting stress and post-meeting letdown. What a great profession.