Martino: Public Workshops or Private Meetings

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I attended the June 6th Palm Beach Gardens City Council meeting to listen to the Costco renovation plans and subsequent vote to approve or disapprove. The vote was 3 to 1 to approve with not much discussion of substance by the City Council members. Also on the agenda were several other major projects petitioned by various business and developer interests. With little Council discussion these projects were approved to move forward unanimously which if you regularly attend the once per month Council meeting you will recognize as almost always the norm.

What I found most interesting about the above projects and Council votes was the “coziness” of the banter between the Council and the developer representatives and/or lobbyists. Some of these projects were scheduled for Quasi-Judicial Hearings. Law requires the Council members to announce their individual contacts with representatives of the project and anyone else that they may converse with concerning the Quasi-Judicial Hearing subject. The rub here is the Council members do not offer any real insights into these conversations; therefore, the Public is not privy as to how these conversations impact the decision-making process and, paraphrasing the Council members, “the relationship building”.

It is important to stress that wariness about the above does not suggest anything untoward but only awkward perceptions that can and should be avoided. To alleviate this awkwardness a simple and straight forward suggestion is more scheduled meetings with the Public in the Council chambers and fewer meetings with the lobbyists in private. Scheduled public workshop meetings on developer projects would allow the Council to discuss in Public what they now are discussing in private. The Public would have more notice that a petitioned project is being considered, more opportunity to digest the petitioned project, and therefore, may be more intellectually competent to comment pro or con with the Council both prior to and at the Public Hearings of said projects. Transparency, communication, and openness, are fundamentals of good government and required by Florida’s Sunshine Law.

It is my considered opinion, regularly scheduled workshops for development projects or for any other important Public business prior to full staff review are a necessity and important to the conduct of the Public’s business. Regularly scheduled workshops are not a new concept to the Palm Beach Gardens City Council processes and work product. It was a City Council process followed for over 40 years. When and why scheduled workshops were discontinued is mystifying. During most of those years, two workshops and two regular meetings were held each month on Thursday evenings. From my perspective, workshop meetings afford everyone and every entity involved in the Public’s business to become better educated and informed. The collective rather than individual thought and decision-making processes of the City Council members are better understood by themselves, by the petitioners, by the Administration, and most important by the Public. The Council’s policy directives concerning the petition are understood by the Administration before the petition is scrutinized and reviewed for compliance and other issues which in my view is not the current modus operandi.

With the imposition of term limits it was hoped new and different faces on the City Council would bring innovation and change to the City Council’s protocol. The faces have changed but by and large the conduct of City business has not. It is my opinion that the inherited process flaws are still embedded. I have suggested and discussed the need for scheduled workshops before but with no success. The lack of scheduled workshop meetings, agenda preparation, agenda reviews in private by Council members, Council and Administration intersection, among other concerns are subjects worth addressing and discussing, perhaps, in a scheduled workshop. It is my conviction that in some instances the City Council’s perspective on the processes necessary to conduct the City’s business are not always consistent with the best interests of residents.