I feel that attendance at their conventions can be positive. Those who go can quite possibly bring back useful information to their cities. My complaints have been that there were many times when the city sent, IMHO, too many people to these conventions. The suggestion was to send four people, the mayor, two council members and the city manager. They could then report back to the governing body about what they learned at the various seminars that could be useful to our city.
At the convention of the NLC that was recently held in DC, we sent only three people. That's good. We sent Mayor Meyers, Council Member Sandifer and City Manager Gonzales. I do question the mayor's participation on this trip since in about 3 weeks he will no longer be mayor. Based on open records requests for similar trips a safe guess is that we spent $5K-$6K for this trip.
So, what kind of report of useful information was given to the governing body?
Below is the info as obtained via an open records request. The info is in an email from the city manager to the governing body (council). This is all that was mentioned in that email about the trip.
National League of Cities. We had a very good experience at the NLC Conference, with the highlight being 7th row back to hear President Obama speak in person to the membership. It was very cool. We also had good visits with Senator Roberts, Senator Moran and Representative Yoder's staff person. They provided us with some current information on efforts being made in regard to trains and quiet zones; and were intrigued with the "active handicapped access" symbol. We will follow up with them.
Golly, can you imagine the excitement that would have been expressed if they had been sitting in the third row?
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