Meeting Participation in Culver

facepalmMonday night I went to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Culver Redevelopment Commission at 5:00 at the Culver Town Hall.  I arrived to find the door locked.  I looked at the notice on the bulletin board and it stated that the regularly scheduled meeting had been changed to 4:00 and that they had added a joint meeting with the Town Council which they had moved to the Culver Library at 5:00.

As I’ve said here before I tend to cut volunteer board members a lot of slack.  They give a lot of time and often only receive slings and arrows from the public in return.  I don’t think that’s an excuse for making public participation difficult.  My position as Culver’s representative on the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation Board means that my representation there is closely tied to the work the redevelopment commission does.  I attend almost every meeting of the redevelopment commission.  It is on my calendar to be there on the third Monday at 5:00.  It frustrates me to no end when I make a special effort to be at a meeting only to find that they moved the meeting, with private discussion between meetings.  I’m not special.  They don’t have to let me know.  But I think it’s disrespectful and says something about their relationship with MCEDC.   While they have fulfilled the letter of the law by posting it on the bulletin board at the Town Hall I also feel it does a disservice to the community.  There is also a page on that same bulletin board listing all of the regularly scheduled meetings.  If someone other than myself had gone down to see when the next meeting was, read that list and didn’t check later to see that the meeting had been rescheduled they would have been standing out there fuming like myself.

What amazes me is that this seems to surprise committee and board members.  I did go to the joint meeting at the library and I was the only member of the public present.  The comment was made that they moved the venue expecting more public participation and the need for space.

  1. A 5:00 meeting is very difficult for anyone who works to attend.
  2. Apparently you had to have been at the previous Town Board meeting in order to know that there was a special meeting.
  3. Our main news source for Culver is a weekly paper which cannot be expected to give the public timely notice.

I didn’t say anything at the meeting.  Maybe it was discussed at the previous Redevelopment Commission meeting and I missed it.  That doesn’t change my plea for consistency.

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