Personal Experience at the City Council Meeting

On Monday, April 13th, 2009, I visited the Culver City city council meeting, and found that they operate using a council-manager form of government. For a city with a population of about 38,000, this type of governmental structure is fairly common, and I was not surprised to see it in action in a community where the median household income is around $56,000 a year. Culver City is also a culturally rich community with a 60 percent Caucasian population, and a quarter of the residents are either of African American or Asian decent. The mayor, D. Scott Malsin, is one of five members on the council, and his term as mayor is on a rotating basis. Having been to a Hermosa Beach city council meeting with a similar council-manager structure, I knew

Of course, during meetings, many questions are sure to arise about the same factors. Most people want know what will be done on roadway conditions, what will be done about the cleaning of the parks, etc. One of the biggest, and very surprising, issues brought up recently by the Common Council is a chicken ordinance for Warsaw. In a unanimous vote, the Warsaw Planning Commission has given their approval to allow chickens within the city limits. However, the Council voted “no” on the ordinance that, if passed, would have allowed a select number of residents to raise and maintain chickens on their property inside the city

The experience going to the council meeting was great and I would imagine that the items on the agenda had a great deal to do with that. The topics I found the most interesting revolved around public nudity, serving alcohol in public, spending grant money, a gun ordinance, and polling the public about being taxed. The agenda item revolving around public nudity took up most of the time. Currently, Eureka doesn't have a ordinance in place to give police authority to arrest citizens who are nude in public when it isn't a sexual act. The chief of police gave example of a person doing Tai Chi in a public park nude. The police were called and couldn't do anything short of asking him to put his clothes on. There was concern among a few council members

As the daughter of the Mayor of Buffalo, I was born into a family with strong political identities. My mother’s name is Teri Lachermeier. Buffalo has been her home for most of her life. My father's name is David Grage and they raised me and my two other siblings in the town of Buffalo.

On September 9, 2014 I attended the Glendale City Council meeting which was held at the Council Chamber which is located on the 2nd floor of the Glendale City Hall, Room 200, 613 East Broadway, Glendale, California. The meeting commenced at 6 p.m. and lasted for approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes. Several policy proposals were made and discussed in this particular meeting. This paper is aimed at discussing the various policy proposals made and debated at this meeting with a view to establishing whether they are acceptable or unacceptable to the Glendale electorate. It is, however, essential to provide a brief background of the City of Glendale before embarking on a discussion of policy proposals.

The city council of Atlanta, Georgia servers as a local legislative government branch. The council is made of the president, Ceasar Mitchell and fifteen members elected from district within the city. The city of Atlanta is broken up into twelve different districts and three post, each councilmen is responsible for representing the needs and wants for their district. The members of the council are elected by the citizens, and they work together to pass laws, make general policies, supervise city government, and appropriate funds for various needs. Usually, council meetings are open to the public, and public input is welcomed. The majority the councils work is done in committees. In the committees proposed legislation is debated and the members of other government branches and the public are given a chance to comment. Each council member serves on at least three of the council's standing committees, and select committees and panels. This week the author had the chance to attend a City of Atlanta council committee meeting and view how the meeting was conducted and went.

The City of Whittier has two city meetings a month were the people of the community are welcome to attend. One of their city council meetings was held on April 26 at 6:30pm. The council members are Owner Newcomer, Cathy Warner and Bob Henderson. The Mayor Pro tem is Joe Vinatieri and the Mayor of Whittier is Fernando Dutra. There was a good amount of public attendance, but the attendance died out after recess. Public participation was not effective or really used throughout the meeting. The public comments part of the meeting was where the public’s voice was most heard.

A bill is a proposed legislation that is brought to a legislative body. In the case of the New York City Council, the bill is introduced into the Council at a Stated Meeting and becomes a law after an intricate voting or vetoing process with the Council and the Mayor of New York City (“Legislative Process”). In the last year, many bills were passed by the New York City Council. While browsing through the list of bills passed in the last year, a bill in particular stood out to me – “Reducing city government emission of greenhouse gases by 40 percent by 2030,” as it is a bill that proposes a way to tackle climate change. The bill was dated to be on the agenda for October 15, 2015, and its co-sponsors are Donovan J. Richards, Costa G. Constantinides, Margaret S. Chin, Mathieu Eugene, Vincent J. Gentile, Corey D. Johnson, Peter A. Koo, Rosie Mendez, Annabel Palma, Deborah L. Rose, Andrew Cohen, and Ydanis A. Rodriguez. It proposes for the city government to have at least a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (“The New York City Council”).

The Dahlonega City Hall was crowded on the evening of March 1st 2010. The seats were full, except for at the very front, and the standing room was filled almost out the door. The crowd, mostly made up of students, leaned in to hear as the voices of the City Council members faded in and out of the faltering sound system. The six City Council members and the mayor sat along a bench as if they were the judges at a hearing. Because of the ongoing discussions and the crowd, I thought I had arrived a few minutes late; but I was able to find a seat in the front two rows. Despite how packed the small room was there were plenty of empty seats in the front. I had thought the meeting was well on its way by the way conversation was going and

My government professor at South Texas College gave the class a very rigorous assignment that required a more participation than usual. We were told to go to a regular government meeting, for instance, a city council meeting or a school board meeting, and observe the proceedings and then write about what took place at the meeting.

Mayor calls on each citizen to express his/her one concern – their grievance with-in the household, limited to ten minutes, max. Request the W&M to time each talk. Everyone talks directly to the Judge. Remember, no finger pointing and respect time rations for other council members!

Bruno, Saskatchewan, a small town east of Saskatoon where I grew up, is known for its hay farms, and cherry festivals. Similar to other small towns, you will find the town office on the busiest street in town-the main street. On February 22, 2016, I attended a public meeting in Bruno’s town office. The public meeting was a town of Bruno regular monthly council meeting. I planned on staying as long as it took for me to get the information I needed on policy and how the council made decisions. Within this council meeting, the council freely discussed matters, occasionally having some order. In addition, there was no form of talking stick, which caused Interruptions and over talking.

Long Beach City Councilmembers made a break through after a unanimous vote for the ban of Styrofoam packaging from use at Long Beach restaurants last Tuesday at City Council. The ban is an attempt to help lessen the amount of micro plastic pollution littering the city parks, beaches, and waterways. The vote was propositioned last year by one of the Councilmembers. Research was led by local environmental group that found broken pieces of polystyrene mixed in the city’s beach sand. City council and will place a ban on the product being used by restaurants, retail settings, and food trucks. Large restaurants will have to comply with the ban within nine months of the ordinance’s passage. Smaller restaurants would be subject to the ban at a later date. Styrofoam ice chests, bean bag

During government round table, I learned a lot of information that I never thought I would want to know. I probably learned the most about how judges work, specifically ours, because it was the most interesting one to me. Judge Rathburn is the municipal judge here and he deals with many cases varying of sorts. There is even very little restriction on what he has to or can judge. What was really interesting and meant a lot to me was when he said that he wants to change your behaviour and not just make you pay. This made me feel like he

When i arrived at the city hall I was about 30 to 45 min early. I sat down in conference room and listened to them talk about what they could do to help the fire department. They also talked about what they would do with the old uniforms. Once the council member meeting was over the clerk of the council, Molly Kapeluck, helped me and a few other students make sure they had everything they needed. Before the meeting started i got a picture with James V. Ahlstrom. He is in charge of Ward 1. When it was time to start, they called the meeting to order. Then we stood up and said “The Pledge of Allegiance”. Once The Pledge of Allegiance ended we were seated. They started off with roll call of council members. Once recorded by the clerk they started with an award for the Pavs