Going to the city’s Neighborhood Summit? See the agenda

| Neighborhoods | West Seattle news

This Saturday at Seattle Center‘s Exhibition Hall (Mercer/3rd), Mayor Ed Murray hosts the “Neighborhood Summit” he promised to have within 100 days of taking office. If you’re thinking of going, the agenda is now available so you can make up your mind – or, if you know you’re going, you can preplan how to spend the four hours. See it here. Child care and light refreshments are promised; we see at least one West Seattle name on the list of “peer networking” participants – Cindi Barker, community-preparedness guru, who has provided lots of info here on WSB to help you get prepared. The summit’s scheduled 9 am-1 pm on Saturday, though the agenda looks conducive to dropping in for just part of it if you can’t commit to that entire time frame.

Early Agendas April 1, 2014 (8:27 pm)

See this Neighborhood Councils? This reminds me of a persistent lack in the democratic process which Councils are suppose to uphold.

Please, post your agendas earlier than one day in advance. People are far too busy to not been given reasonable advance notice of topics. Seriously. One week is the minimum with a copy of minutes of last meeting attached or posted.

It’s. not very democratic not to do so.

mcbride April 1, 2014 (11:21 pm)

You know this is the Mayor’s show, right? We’ve all been waiting for this info.
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Since you bring it up, almost everybody involved in a neighborhood council is a volunteer. I’ve had the good fortune to get to know a few of them. Turns out, they too have jobs, and kids, and families, and lives. And the agendas which precede the meetings have been assembled while they set all of that aside to work on behalf of their community. In many cases, this involves securing speakers in the public sector who have also worked a full day and are giving up their evening. Unsurprisingly, this often means delays in locking an agenda. Sure, it could be done sooner, but they would often read “We’re going to talk about things. And stuff.”
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A suggestion: Be the change you seek.

early agendas April 1, 2014 (11:42 pm)

Just type it up earlier. How often are minutes presented? Democracy is about showing up (thanks for that!) but also about process. Parliamentary procedure and all that exists for a reason.

PIA but true.

Have a great week!

Cindi B April 2, 2014 (12:48 am)

I will point out that most community groups publish their agendas at least one and often two weeks in advance, on their websites or in direct emails to members. The news outlets often only publish them on the day before or day of, that kind of timeliness is just the way major news works. If you have a specific group you are talking about, please let them know directly.

WSB April 2, 2014 (6:11 am)

With all due respect to the fabulous Cindi, having covered all the community councils here for the past six years, I will say, the availability of agendas varies wildly. We ARE on the mailing lists (or follow the websites) through which the councils inform their members, and in some cases, a mention of an agenda doesn’t even arrive until the same day, if at all. But in more than a few cases, including Cindi’s group, it does, and it’s available online too. IMNSHO, the challenge is more the fact some groups still don’t have a website, or if they do, the person who updated it drifted off some time ago, so it is not reliably updated, even if there is an agenda available. However, most groups are kept alive by a tiny core of people, no matter what the requests for involvement, and they work their butts off. Want to bludgeon them for not making an agenda available earlier? Join them and volunteer to be the person who gets it online the second it’s available. Given the fact this is only a monthly task, one person who really cares could probably help multiple groups. – Tracy

Suggestion Box April 2, 2014 (7:10 pm)

TR- you would help those struggling groups if you mentioned it. They listen to you. Or a WSB sponsored civics 101 workshop “best practices”. You would be the direct beneficiary.

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