RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Council makes last-minute change; meeting is Tue. at 7 A fair amount of public interest is expected for the next meeting of the Washington City Council, which will be a work meeting next Tuesday at 7 p.m. at City Hall. According to Mayor Willie Burns' new plan, while the public may attend, they may not speak until the regular meeting Monday night. However, a letter to the editor (see page 4) indicates that public input will be allowed. The new meeting time was an- nounced after the print edition of this newspaper was published. The stated reason was a scheduling conflict.An effort is being made by The News-Reporter to inform the public of the change so that people don't go to City Hall at the originally scheduled time only to findthat the meeting has already taken place. The council met at their first such working meeting on Wednesday, February 6, at 4:45 p.m. There were no spectators and no media present, although officialnotificationwas made of a called meeting. At the regular Monday night meeting the following week, after reports from tourism, the Chamber, police department, and two minor items were voted on, Mayor Burns adjourned the meeting, leaving both council members and citizens stunned that the usual round-thetable comments from councilmen was no longer on the agenda. At next Wednesday afternoon's meeting, council members are expected to address their opposition to the mayor's new two-part city council meetings, and several councilmen have already expressed their surprise and disagreement after last month's meeting. Councilman Rev. G.L. Avery, in a letter in last week's News-Reporter, apologized to the citizens of Washington for the change, and stated his opposition. "I do not go along with the so-called 4:45 work session; some of us have other things to do," he wrote. "In my opinion, having a meeting at such an odd hour, when most citizens cannot attend, is a deliberate attempt to limit the number of attendees at the meeting." One of the topics discussed at the first working meeting, and expected to come up again at next Wednesday's meeting, is the use and oversight of city-issued credit cards. Council members reviewing the credit-card records say that a few of the mayor's expenditures point out the need for tighter controls on spending, and more oversight from the council. In a letter to the editor in this week's News-Reporter, Mayor Burns stated, "As indicated in the February 14 paper I have no intention to stifle public input, I simply wanted to get the members of the council to communicate and cooperate on the important matters of the city and not become embroiled in personality issues."
He went on to write, "I encourage public input at our meetings and I am certain that my fellow elected officials join me in encouraging communication and cooperation."
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||
