It's Time to Ask a Council Member

The City's At-Large Council Members will be open for discussion

Back in 2017, Council Member Todd Severt and myself ran for City Council with a desire to improve communications between city hall and the residents we serve. As part of that effort was the establishment of the quarterly “Ask-A-Council Member” workshops. These workshops weren’t designed to discuss pending legislation, but were a more general discussion to bring the citizens residents and council members closer together in a way to facilitate open discussions on those items that residents wanted to bring foward.

Many of the issues that were brought up were the bread and butter concerns that make up local government — Everyting from faded stop signs to parks that needed attention took up a lot of the discussion. But many discussions also focused on how the government works. There were questions about what departments were responsible for certain functions. Other questions included the role of council in the decision making process. These discussions were always informal and informative.

The format allowed for a free-flowing discussion of our communty without having to navigate a city council meeting and waiting until the very end to have an opporuntity to discuss issues. And while city council meetings are opportunities to for residents to express their concerns, these meetings aren’t necessarily the best format to have an open dialouge between residents and elected officials.

The first “Ask-A-Council Member” workshop of the year will take place this coming Saturday, March 9th at 9:00 a.m. at the Lincoln Community Center, 110 West Ash Street. I plan to be in attendance and if you have a question that you want asked, please feel free to send me your question to william.lutz17@gmail.com or leave your question in the comment thread. I’ll ask your question and follow up with you on the answer.

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CORRECTION: This post was updated to show the correct date of the meeting, which is Saturday, March 9th.