For more than a year the City Council has been a legislative body to be heard, but not seen since the outbreak of Covid. The 20 members can see each other virtually via Zoom while the public may listen by teleconference and even then only a handful join the queue.
The council is now in summer session, one full meeting each of July and August, then returning in September for the regular schedule the first and third Mondays of each month, except for November which is one meeting.
The earliest likelihood of in-person sessions is October, according to City Council President Aidee Nieves. She says the council chambers on Lyon Terrace needs some cosmetic TLC such as an intercom system.
Nieves adds, however, she may keep the committee meetings virtual because they’ve led to higher attendance to reach quorums.
“My preference is to keep committee meetings virtual, but I’ll first check with committee chairs to see what they think,” she says.
The serious work of the council is done at the committee level. What’s passed in committee is generally signed off by the full body. The public is generally not allowed to speak at committee meetings. That function is reserved for the full body 30 minutes prior to its regular business.
So we could see a hybrid approach from Nieves: committee meetings virtual, full body in-person.
What say you?
Time for a charter change, to establish an elective Board of Finance and Revenue. To take the burden off the Mayor and City Council.
Time for a charter change. Abolish the Common Council. They are a worthless bunch of do nothings. Especially the President. The worst president in history.
She says she wants to keep committee meetings Wirral because they have a better chance of getting a quorum. What a disgrace!
Troll, the Common Council has been abolished. And Aidee’s not in charge of the Wirral Peninsula.
Well that’s good to hear.
She was an absolute waste.
Thanks for checking into this Lennie..
Holding City Council meetings in the Chamber where Council members presence and attention to matters at hand can be observed should not be forestalled by minor matters like an improved intercom capacity. After all what is the purpose of a public meeting? To show the public that their elected representatives are handling their responsibilities, perhaps? We all understand that what is printed by the City for public consumption from Council meetings rarely informs the public.
As was said above, the real work of the Council is reviewed, discussed and voted upon at the committee level and passed upstairs for a vote (but rarely a discussion).
Did Aidee admit that attendance by Council members at Committee meetings improved when held on ZOOM? But the public understanding of those dialogues and how a decision would make the public repsonsible financially and otherwise, was left to news media and rumor routinely.
LG – You report that “the public is not allowed to speak in Committee Meetings”. Is that a fact and the last word? Challenged before COVID-ZOOM, at least one Chair was open to public comment, brief and to the matter at hand, but that courtesy changed depending on who chaired a meeting. Has ZOOM protocol changed matters or just memories?
Finally, call to your attention a good read these days, First Principles by Professor Brick, retrospective view of the first four Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, their education, region, viewpoints and life experience brought to the governing task. The broad range of what Classical history had to say about human virtue was understood but human virtue, also known as public spiritedness, could not be counted on which is how governance was constructed at the time with three branches, checks and balances built in and a Constitution not intended for all time, but to be amended as required to get closer to a genuine democracy with participation of citizens with equal rights including justice from the courts. Where we are today. Trying to shed the shame of chattel slavery, after 1863, but when followed by a short and incomplete Reconstruction, allowed “white supremacy” to operate in too many places systematically to limit rights and continue injustice. Not just in Bridgeport. Time will tell.
JML, to your point, public does not typically speak during committee meetings in a formal way. Committees do conduct public hearings on matters, but no institutionalized set aside for speaking as is done with the full body.
To your point Lennie, the public is normally silenced by the committee but a occasions they are permitted to speak. But that has been getting rarer and rarer as time goes by.
Play it again Sam.
Bob, to your point, when you were on the council you did see that if Donald Day and myself wanted to speak at a committee meeting you did make it happen.
Correction; Book Author is Professor Thomas Ricks. Very readable text taking you back into the reality of the lives and learnings of our Founding Presidents as well as original document history.
We need to elect a new council. Plain and simple.
I would bet it will be longer that Oct before in person meetings resume… Joe doesn’t wanna have to sit there, and when he does, he rushes through the meetings like he has a plane to catch… He can’t be bothered..
Joe can just jump on a computer at home in Easton and go through the motions..
Ron
Do you remember our ordinance on Fire Department closures and the case with 7-11?
You guys helped me write an ordinance dealing with closures since there was a rash of them when Moran then Ganim took over.
So “we” wrote an ordinance dealing with a mandatory public hearing before the department could close a house.
You also recommended included closures for an extended period of time. Sure enough 7-11 was closed for major structural repairs and exceeded the time.
You reminded me of it and sure enough we had a public hearing and determined the Black Rock was being underserved.
They had to open a temporary house until the repairs were finished.
That’s called collaboration. Something this current council know nothing about. All they do is what City Hall tells them to do.
Bob, oh yes I remember that quite well and I remember how Mayor Bill Finch tried to stop Judge Carmen Lopez, Ron Morales and myself from talking at the public hearing at Longfellow School concerning 7-11 fire house and sure enough we had a public hearing and determined that Black Rock was being underserved. Bob, that ordinance dealing with a mandatory public hearing before the department could close a house is a life and death ordinance because it gets the facts out to the public. Bob, there are studies that show once a fire house is closed or a fire fighting unit are removed they will never be replced. The game that was trying to do was the fire house on Ocean Terrace known as 7-11 has a fire engine that puts out a fire and ladder 11 that does search and rescue and they work as a team to save life but Finch was saying that the fire house would not be closed because there would be a fire vehicle responding but it would take 8 extra minutes for a backup vehicle to respond where the BFD mission is to respond within 5 minutes. Someone needs to ask the fire chief “what are the allowable number of fire deaths for Bridgeport?” That question was asked in court when the city remove engine 4 from Wood Ave and the allowable number of fire deaths was 6, Bob this is information that is not known to the city council and they have no interest in knowing. Thank you Bob for your service that a lot of people are not aware of.
C O L L A B O R A T I O N.
Plain and simple. But with the stakeholders in the district not with outsiders in City Hall.
Talk about collaboration, I remember one time Council Member McCarthy sheepishly came to me and said he had a problem in his district but he couldn’t do much about it because it involved a relative of the town chair. And since my district border the area maybe I could help.
To make a long story short, I met with residents of the area and came up with a workable solution. The developer agreed to like 6 houses instead of 30 something condos.
But the moral of the story is I just read where Lincoln Avenue and Arlington Street were shut down due to flooding which was the biggest problem and why we were able to win that fight.
Now if Bridgeport could ever fix the root problems in the city real progress could be made.
Tree roots blocking the storm sewers?
*** Good to be safe during this pandemic which is “not” officially gone yet, however wearing a mask during the meetings, aswell the public is wise! So after labor-day should be a good time to try & get back to some type of normal Bpt. City Council meetings would be my guess. Maybe, just maybe, the council’s “rubber stamper” might of gotten lost or misplaced during the council’s pandemic meeting breaks? But what would be the chances of that really happening in Bpt, no? ***
Even if the rubber stamp is missing, Mark Anastasi is alive and well. He will advise the council, whether they ask for it or not, that it is illegal if it goes against the wishes of Mayor Joe.
So unless he retires too it’s same old same old.