Last night, just prior to the franchise fee item coming up, Council rep Straub raised a point of order. He made a motion that the item be removed from the agenda and rescheduled for two weeks (8/24/09). His reasoning was based on what he felt was a lack of notice to the public on this important item.
The item was apparently scheduled for one of the August meetings, and apparently it wasn't until last Tuesday that it was determined that the info was ready to go for last night. That was too late for any advance notice even by just a press release, to appear in Wednesday's Shawnee Dispatch. Technically, an item like this does not need any special notice. The fact that it was listed on the agenda, on Friday, met legal requirements of notice to the public. The Dispatch did run an item on their web site Friday..........but as a weekly (Wed publication) how many would have seen that?
Council reps Sandifer and Kuhn both voiced strong opposition to delaying the discussion and action of this item. They claimed that they had received high volumes of email from the public. They also claimed that there were emails going out with misinformation about the proposal. Kuhn's utterance of the two magical words, "trust me", made me think otherwise. I get nervous when elected officials use those two words. It was almost as if these two did not want further involvement and/or questioning by the public.
Five council reps voted to postpone the item (Pflumm, Sawyer, Goode, Straub & Distler). So now it will come back on 8/24/09.
