Public Comment

Transcript (~4 min @ 45:06)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 44:38 Leila Migliorelli: Um, at this time I'll motion to approve without reading by unanimous consent. The minutes from the August 19th full counsel meeting. Seeing no objection, those minutes are now approved. Um, I will next open by we motion by Nana's consent to open the floor for public comment. Seeing no objections, we are now open for public comment. This is the portion of the meeting where anyone can speak on any item on our agenda. Just a reminder, public comment is an opportunity for the public to share their thoughts. The council will not be responding. Is there anyone in public tonight wishing to speak in public comment?

▶ 45:18 Leila Migliorelli: Yeah. Please approach the table and you can state your name and, uh, city for record.

▶ 45:24 Speaker 3: Megan McDonough for 180 5 Main Street. Um, I just wanted to come down to just say on the record, I know it's not really a space for this, but I hope that you'll allow me to just make a comment. Um, I know that people are gonna be appointed to the traffic commission and those are, those names will be presented to you tonight. I just had, um, I wanted to just make Brad comment about boards and commissions and that's, um, I saw recently that I don't know if Lily Martin had done it, of her own inspiration or if it's a move that's being made by the mayor's office, but maybe sometime in the last year, on the week ahead email, somebody had listed all of the openings and I said, wow, that's great. You can see it right there. You don't have to dig for it, you don't have to find the chair, you don't have to. Um, and I was just wondering if for greater access to people joining these boards and commissions and to encourage it, if there could be greater transparency, um, with, you know, in 30 days you have 30 days to apply for this opening 45 days. Is that something that could come from the chair, submitting it to the city council, the chair submitting it to the mayor's office? I know that there's, there would be some sort of chain of, you know, communication that would have to be determined because boards and commissions are governed in different ways, whether it's by state or, or um, or internally by the city. But I feel like we are making all these policy updates and we're trying to be more accessible and, you know, is that a conversation that could happen? So over the weekend I was able to reach a number of the council that's here just to start asking those questions and I asked those questions to the mayor's office today. Um, and I actually heard back from more than half of you, which was amazing and said that that that does seem like something that could somehow be talked about somewhere, you know, whether that is just asking to the mayor, um, or if that's an ordinance. I don't know really how some that would happen to make sure that it would happen. And then, um, and then thinking about equity too in representation, like our boards and commissions tend to be pretty white. Um, it might be affluent people might sit on them for a rather long time. And so wondering if there's any room in there too to say, you know, where does diversity come in? If somebody is disabled, if they're a person of color, if they're a senior, how could we elevate them? Is that just colloquially being like there is six applicants and one of them is, uh, from a marginalized background. Um, do we just, you know, choose to uplift them or if that's, um, or if that's something that would actually be written. And um, so yeah, so that's, that's my first part. And my second part is I noticed that sometimes when the applicants come through there are resumes, um, and sometimes there are not. So I was wondering if the public could see the resumes every time instead of just the council. So thank you.

▶ 48:28 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to speak in public comment tonight? In person or online? Madam Clerk.

▶ 48:35 Speaker 3: There are no attendees online. Okay.

▶ 48:38 Leila Migliorelli: Um, if there's no objection, I'd like to motion by n as consent to close public comment. Seeing no objection, we are now closed for public comment and I will now motion by unanimous consent to, uh, recess and allow us to go back to appropriations and oversight. Seeing no objection, we are now in recess.