Update: 2/28/08, 8:44 PM: I see that the link to the agenda for 2/20 is working. The agenda is better prepared than previous ones. (As I will show next week, some of the remarks in an email I received in my Public Records Requests, 2008-1 A and B, may explain why the agenda is more detailed.)
Here are three questions, though:
(1) When the notice for a Wednesday, 2/20 PFC meeting comes out on Friday, 2/15, doesn’t that seem that the two weekend days reduce the available exposure & attention the meeting will receive?
(2) Was this meeting announced on the main page of the City of Whitewater website, like other meetings? I don’t recall seeing it there.
(3) If the agenda link on the website doesn’t work until after the meeting, what kind of website notice is that?
At the City of Whitewater website, as of this morning, there is a link to a February 20th agenda of the Police and Fire Commission. It doesn’t open properly as of this post, but it’s there. (The January 10th Special Meeting agenda of the PFC also mentioned that there would be a 2/20 — presumably regular — meeting.) I have two questions:
1. Did the meeting take place? I can’t tell, of course, from a broken link to an agenda.
2. If there were a meeting on February 20th, how did the City of Whitewater publicize it? I do not recall seeing it announced on the main page of the City of Whitewater website. The law requires notice (albeit short); most commissions and boards in our city in practice provide much better notice than the law requires.
The Whitewater PFC does not follow that practice. As I have noted before, this significantly reduces the chances for citizen participation, in what should be one of the best-announced meetings in Whitewater.
The members of the Commission are free — yes, you really are, under the law — to offer an explanation.
Comment on a public duty should always be more important than silence to maintain social standing, or for any other reason.
I can be reached at adams@freewhitewater.com.