Elk Grove Charter Commission Documents Reveals Meetings, Attendance
During last Wednesday night's Elk Grove City Council meeting, there was a pointed exchange between council member Jim Cooper and city ...
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2009/12/elk-grove-charter-commission-documents.html
During last Wednesday night's Elk Grove City Council meeting, there was a pointed exchange between council member Jim Cooper and city charter commissioner Jake Rambo. (See video clip here.)
While the exchange culminated with racially tinged claims and counter claims between the two, the discussion leading to that point concerned the number and quality of outreach meetings conducted by the charter commission.
During his exchange with Rambo, Cooper displayed the “Elk Grove Charter Commission – Meeting Matrix.” See entire document on next page)
According to the document filed on November 3, 2009, the charter commission held 39 meetings with a documented attendance of 397 people.
During last week's city council meeting Rambo said he felt that over 3,000 people had been contacted through various outreach meetings conducted by the charter commission. Rambo noted that they had not made head counts at several of the meetings citing privacy concerns.
The best attended outreach meeting noted on the matrix was the October 29, 2009 event sponsored by the Elk Grove Community Connection that listed 100 attendees. Of the 39 outreach meetings documented, 24 did not list any attendance figures.
Political agenda lurking behind October 1 meetings?
Among those meetings that did not list attendance figures, seven were documented to have been held on October 1, 2009. Two of the meetings, conducted by then commissioner Christopher Orrock, were held before Republican Party groups – The Cosumnes California Republican assembly and the Elk Grove Republican Club.
There was no listed meetings held targeting local Democrat Party groups. It is not know whether or not commissioners extended an offer to Democrats for a presentation, and if they did, if Democrats accepted an invitation.
Page 1
See the remaining meeting matrix below
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Posts
3 comments
Let's assume that the 3000 number is correct, even though it was not the numbers given to the CC. That's maybe 2% of the population over a period of one year. Pretty dismal figures I would say. As stated by one on the commission "you didn't ask us to keep numbers", I would think that would be pretty elementary in order to know how well you were covering the community. But, on their behalf, it was voluntary work as they reminded us many times and they also had that other "activity" to organize. We maybe just have to chalk the thousands spent as "a lesson learned" and stop the bleeding. Very few in the community even know about the Charter. As far as a flyer in the utility bill in January, most trash that junk included with our statements. You better put some perfume or a squeaky noise on it if you want it read.
As a long time advocate and strong supporter of a charter for our city, I am deeply disappointed in how our first attempt has faired. This go-around, the process has been tainted with politics, union intimidation and personal aspirations by some of its charter commissioners. As it stands now, I could not support any recommendations made by this commission nor any by our (current) city council. Perhaps the next time around we'll get the make-up of our commission right and our leaders will have the communities best interest in mind rather than their own. We are just not ready yet.
The first mistake is having the Elk Grove City Council wiled power over a commission that is formulating how the Councils election, power, number of council members is tetermined. Talk about the fox counting the eggs in the hen house...just ridiculous. The absolute best thing that the voters can do is VOTE DOWN ANY CHARTER CREATED BY THIS COMMISSION AND THE CURRENT COUNCIL ! ! ! ! !
Post a Comment