Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Citizen comment and involvement

One of the better things the Fishers Town Council does (and I have often been critical of them) is to hold regular council meetings in the evenings.  They also live stream the regular council meetings from the town website, and council minutes are also available in a pretty timely manner.

They do not however, routinely allow citizen comment on anything other than those things legally required to be open to public hearing, such as budgets and annexations.  Many other units of government DO allow, within reasonable limits, citizen comments.  Some even have a short "open mike" period for citizens to raise issues, or to praise something good.

As Fishers transitions from "town" to "city", I would urge the local government to be receptive to more citizen involvement and comment.  A good way to start would be the "open mike" suggestion, and citizen involvement in the transition to becoming a City, such as citizens being involved in drawing the new council districts, something the current council members are WAY too personally interested in.

No comments:

Post a Comment