Monday, January 28, 2008

Public Hearing Tonight: 7 pm

The city council will convene tonight for its regularly scheduled public hearing meeting, which happens the 4th Thursday of every month, except August, when the city shuts down and an informative sign (see right) is hung on all doors.
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I will be attending the meeting, and plan to set up an exciting live-blog experience. I have made precise configurations to my computer to allow a fully secure, highly secretive feed straight from my mind to these pages, and into your homes.
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I am attending despite the fact that doing so will prevent me from keeping a 6 year tradition that I have established for this date, determining that tomorrow will suffice as keeping the streak alive.
The agenda for the meeting can be seen HERE. Some highlights to look for:
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-Citizen Involvement. The last city council meeting was fabulously entertaining, as citizen uproar to fight crime was met with indignation. I have heard rumblings of a major stunt today, however am highly skeptical. Tune into the live feed for an update.
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-O-24-07: public hearing on sandwich board signs. I have not read the bill, but there is no possible way that it could be important. I can't wait to see if someone testifies on this.
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-O-56-07: green buildings public hearing. I actually thought that this was rolled up in O-27-07 Revised "D", but apparently not. Quite confusing. Anyway, the home builders promise to be there and remind us that it is not good for economic stimulation to make it necessarily more expensive to build houses, especially at this point in time.
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-O-61-07: public hearing on grant funding. The bill would require anybody receiving city money to match 50% of what they are being given--i.e., fundraise on their own. I will enjoy hearing how angry the non-profits are, and how they will all close up shop if this happens.
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As per usual, the city will go out of order and consider legislation at the public hearing meeting, this time on 2 items. The second item is approving a reclassification of civil service classifications, which I'm assuming is needed for the budget, which is legally required to be ready by the end of February. Then, on a first reader is a bill to move the authority for granting subdivisions from the Planning Commission to the Board of Appeals. It's fishy to me why this is so much of an emergency to put on a special agenda. I'll let you know if I find out.

6 comments:

Paul Foer said...

Brian Sandwich boards are an important issue. Would you want to see our sidewalks littered with them? Apparently, from what I have been told by a reliable source, the mayor has instructed her cronies to ignore city law and allow certain boards to go up while city law says they must get HPC approval......

Paul Foer said...

Brian
Allowing these types of nasty, negative, disgusting, mean spirited comments from cowardly cockroaches (after all they keep their identity in the dark) diminishes and detracts from the value of Annapolis Politics.
I can only hope that this sick person has not passed on is genetic material.

Brian Gill said...

I have very lenient standards for comments. I have only ever deleted one and it was shockingly vulgar.

In general, I think if the comments involve people in the public eye and/or people who have to means to respond, then they can stay. I would rather let people see everything that goes on and have them make up their own minds.

Anonymous said...

Paul, Brian:

Maybe each of you should have a section on your Blogs, like the Hate Hannity Hotline. Then, these exceptionally bright people will have a special place to put their words of wisdom.

Bob McWilliams

Anonymous said...

Finest Sir, that is an extraordinary idea, however, I believe it would take a whole blog site for all the comments regarding a certain blog site and his aloof ideas. People read the Annapolis Politics site for a clear understanding of the issues facing our local annapolis government and how they are being dealt with or not. The other blog siteCP is nothing more than the self publicized rantings of a man disgruntled with the deck life has dealt him. Brian I hope you will continue to write even as you relocate out to the county, as many of us rely upon your guidance, knowledge and wisdom to stay informed on the issues that matter to us. You are as informative as the evening Capital.

Brian Gill said...

That is quite a compliment--thank you. I am only moving barely outside of the city--I still have an Annapolis address. I still plan on doing the same things I do now as far as being involved in city politics.

Plus, it sets me up for an "outside the beltway" type of campaign if I ever decide to move back into the city and run for office!