I have been lucky enough to acquire a handful of minutes over the past few weeks (in between family, work, and public meetings) to interview the District 3 candidates for West Lafayette City Council. For this round of interviews, I chose to focus on the topics of transparency and open government.
Of the three candidates, I asked the following questions:
What are your views on transparency in government?
In what ways is the City of West Lafayette open and transparent?
In what ways can the City of West Lafayette become more proactively transparent.
If elected, how would you help citizens become more informed and knowledgeable of the City’s plans and actions?
How do you currently assess the City’s utilization of the Internet?
Can a government be too open, too transparent, too accountable?
Thank you again to those who came to our last meeting. For those that couldn’t make it, I hope we can see you again soon.
Next month will be a bit different with Sunshine Week March 15th-21st. Also, there is a New Chauncey Land Use Plan discussion on March 26th, 7PM at the West Lafayette Public Library. If you want to experience what working with the APC is like, you should plan to attend.
If you know someone else who would like to sign-up for this information, please have them fill out this short form.
Here’s are some of the notes and links from the last Exploratory Committee:
Since I attend the West Lafayette City Council meetings on a regular basis, I am going to try and give a quick overview from my notes, share items I learned, and help people stay informed on the issues.
This is by no means everything that happened. Just what I found interesting and can easily recall as I sip on tea back in the comfort of my office.
A copy of the December 1st, 2014 agenda can be found here.
Misc.
As an aside, at tonight’s meeting, Councilor Gerald Thomas was absent. Councilor Dietrich wished him good health, so I am not sure what type of illness he is suffering, but I hope for a speedy recovery as well.
UPDATE: I wrote Councilor Thomas and he is doing well.
The same members were reappointed to the commission.
The current TSC school board representative, Janet Elmore, is retiring from the school and will need to be replaced once she submits her letter of resignation.
Grant Streetstation petitioned to be rezoned from PDRS to PDMX, allowing for commercial development along the first floor.
I asked if the Council, the City, the Developers, and local business members could work together to assure some local, non-chain, non-franchise establishments could be secured in this facility. Especially in light of the Indiana Tourism Association’s recent Legislative video campaign.
If we do not strive to provide unique and celebrated offerings in our community, what incentive do we give people to visit again and again? How can we encourage people to become a tourist in their own town?
Communications
Councilor Bunder (District 2) read some constituent e-mails regarding NRT enforcement issues and the Confederate flag being flown, in a window, on Salisbury and Stadium.
Listen to the audio for full details.
Citizen Comments
Thomas Kesler spoke about trash and concrete issues in and around New Chauncey.
I asked and spoke about a few items:
The lack of all documents being made available to the public before the meeting.
We can update some aspects of the City Code to help alleviate this issue.
Not sure of how the vote turned out (Lafayette meets tonight as well), but interested in learning more.
The Form Based Code meeting for New Chauncey should be happening soon. Councilor Keen did not have any new information to report.
I thanked Doug Payne for the great work he and his crew does with the leaf pickup this time of year and appreciate their watchful eye for our leafy curbs.
I suspect (I was witness to a meeting at the Research Park where the public was not invited) that there are also bits of news and other facts floating around that are not being made as public. If you know of anything, please pass along a link, a document, phone number, etc.
I thanked the Redevelopment Commission for the continued invest in our City’s Arts Committee to the tune of $40,000.
It’s a big one! If you pull out anything interesting, let me know.
I also celebrated and thanked Thomas Kesler again for all that he does in our neighborhood and our City. He is inspiration for civic action.
I asked the City to revisit its file update procedures as the current method is leading to link rot. I personally charged Councilor DeBoer with helping to alleviate this problem.
Mary Cook spoke about her experience on the trash ordinance committee (updated in May of 2013) and how push back on trash toters continues to exasperate the problem with trash blowing around the neighborhoods. In light of all this, the City services, in her mind, are outstanding.
