Just a few years ago I remember attending City Council meetings. They were “happening!”
The Council and city support staff gathered together around a table before a crowd of, maybe, five to ten citizens, who mostly had some sort of “skin in the game” on the evening’s agenda. There was a reporter from the Dunn County News, who would attend for the first third of the meeting and then go sit in the hall to write his story. (???)
Police Chief Atkinson was often there. He is a friendly guy. I thought it was reassuring when he was there. If anyone got overly aggressive about their business’ liquor license being revoked, we knew the meeting would still be safe and orderly. (Mostly I think he was there in case the Council wanted to ask him questions.)
Those days are gone.
The reporter stopped coming (leaving the Council pretty much unsupervised.) The police chief stopped coming. COVID hit, as did a number of sticky, controversial issues that brought out angry citizens. The Council was probably relieved that COVID gave them a good excuse to go virtual and conduct business online from the safety of their homes.
Where can I NOT go in Menomonie now, though, because of COVID? There aren’t many places, BUT . . .
Dunn County “public” Board of Supervisors meetings and Menomonie “public” City Council meetings are still completely closed to the public and being held over ZOOM.
(BTW, the SDMA school board has been having in-person meetings with so many angry citizens present that they decided to move the meetings to the high school auditorium to safely accommodate those wanting to attend and speak. Give credit to them on this, where credit is due.)
I recently “attended” a City Council meeting on ZOOM. The mayor was in the HUGE new, 2211 square foot Council chambers (2.4 times larger than the old chambers.) Some city staff were also there. You could hear their voices at times but there was only one camera and it was permanently fixed on the mayor.
At least two council members did not seem to have ability to access ZOOM so they participated in the meeting over the PHONE.
I have tried to attend these meetings using the given phone number and it is very difficult. I can’t imagine trying to actually stay focused and vote and participate as a council member in this way.
It is (way past) time to get back to in-person meetings.
If the Council is scared of COVID, they can get the vaxx. If the Council is scared of the citizens, after asking themselves why the citizens would be upset with something they had done, they should bring the police presence back to the meetings. We would all feel safer knowing the rule of law was there to protect elected officials, staff and citizens.
If elected to City Council, I will do all I reasonably can to bring in-person meetings back ASAP. The theme of my campaign is “sunshine” and I want to shine light back onto our local government so the people can be informed, respond and participate better.
I AM GOD IN MENOMONIE!!!111!!!!!