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She said it had been hard to hear and sometimes councilors did not mute their phones when not talking. She <br />related that since then Mayor and Council Support Manager Beth Forrest had found a bridge line that <br />worked better. She considered it to be very important to be present and to be selective about one’s absences. <br />She did not want to set a limit as to how many times a councilor could participate by phone per quarter, but <br />she wanted to strongly encourage councilors to be in attendance. <br /> <br />Mr. Clark echoed that sentiment. <br /> <br />Topic: Citizen Involvement Committee <br /> <br />Mr. Zelenka recalled that when the Citizen Involvement Committee (CIC) had been disbanded by council <br />order, the function had been delegated to the Planning Commission. He was wondering if furthering citizen <br />input opportunities was an important enough topic to reinstate the committee. He suggested that it should <br />meet perhaps once per quarter to discuss how to garner input from more than the people who most <br />frequently provided public testimony. <br /> <br />Ms. Solomon believed that the councilors did reach out to the community. She considered the council to <br />serve as the CIC. She said if the council was going to discuss ways to reach out, then the council should <br />engage in that conversation. She did not think the work should be passed off to another committee because <br />that would cause more staff work, more minutes, more meeting organization, and “more cookies.” She <br />thought technology had changed a lot since the CIC work had been delegated to the Planning Commission. <br />There were a lot of surveys in the community and there was tremendous online access for citizens. <br />Additionally, she pointed out that each of the councilors were out in the wards encouraging people to <br />participate. She was not interested in reconstituting the CIC. <br /> <br />Ms. Ortiz wondered how they would measure, if there were another CIC, whether there was more input from <br />the community. She remembered that the CIC had not resonated in the west side; she could not recall <br />anyone bringing it up prior to her tenure on the council. She believed that the City did a lot to garner <br />community involvement. She agreed that it was part of the councilors’ charge to be a conduit to the <br />community. <br /> <br />Ms. Taylor had served as the council representative on the CIC before it had disbanded. She noted that the <br />committee had not met every month. She related that “one good thing” about the committee was that its <br />membership included two people from the voter pool. She averred that those people learned things about the <br />City that they would not have learned otherwise and some of them had gone on to become involved in other <br />things. She had thought the CIC was a good thing. She recalled that the CIC had to approve the departmen- <br />tal advisory committees (DAC). She said if it looked like a DAC was weighted too much in one direction or <br />if it had left out an important segment of representation, the CIC could change it. <br /> <br />Mr. Pryor commented that he could see both sides. He was interested in how the council made good <br />decisions and to what degree the public involvement portion could work. He shared the concern that the <br />council did not have the best information to make informed decisions in every case. He believed that much <br />of this had to do with which way the flow of information went. He questioned whether the public should be <br /> <br /> <br />MINUTES—City Council September 23, 2009 Page 2 <br /> <br />