Watching the city council discussion about the potential resolution limiting the placement of agenda items to those that have three city council sponsors, we saw some members of council saying that the resolution would make council meetings more efficient. They pointed out that any council member could put an item on the agenda of what some used to call the “pre council” meeting but now call “legislative review”.
The argument is another effort that contradicts city goal number 5: “Promote Transparent and Consistent Communication Amongst All Members of the Community”.
How?
Quite simply the legislative review meetings do not have their agendas posted on the city web site, nor are videos of the meetings on the web site.
We don’t know what happens in these meetings unless we attend personally.
To us they are much like backroom meetings.
The city manager could resolve this by making the agendas and videos of the legislative review meetings available on the city web site. Transparency is their goal after all.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Did you really think his bunch would want to conduct business in the open. The sad thing is they think they are fully transparent.
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They don’t think for a minute that they are being transparent. They just think they have us all fooled into thinking that they are.
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Just checked the city website. There are no “Legislative Review” meetings listed. I know Council has these meetings because they talk about them frequently. Even if these meetings were open to the public, how would anyone know about them?
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How do other similar size cities handle this?
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Here is San Bernardino, California. Their Legislative Review Committee meeting agendas are posted in advance. Meetings are open to the public.
https://www.ci.san-bernardino.ca.us/cityhall/city_council/council_committee_agendas/legislative_review/default.asp
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The issue was deleted today.
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The only change needed is that every item posted to the agendas have the backup material included. No backup material then it doesn’t get posted. This is something I’ve been trying to get done for nearly 20 years but council is too lazy to make the change.
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