Ear to the Ground
Some of the members of the current Tourism Board were quite brutal in their criticism of the previous Tourism Board. So they seem to have found a way to avoid scrutiny and possible criticism of their own work: hold meetings that are not announced to the public. Gossips has learned that the first meeting of the Tourism Board, which is chaired by Alderman Calvin Lewis (Third Ward), took place last Friday, apparently with no notice given to anyone but the eight members of the board.
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Well, it's kind putting a bunch of vegetarians in charge of a butcher shop.
ReplyDeleteWe have to at least appreciate the irony of complete lack of transparency and disclosure, let alone public involvement, that this process exemplifies given all the noise so many of the board members made last year regarding the public meeting times of the HDC, etc. Seems that in Hudson, some pigs are more equal than others.
ReplyDeletethe disfunction continues. And it was on fine display at last night's DPW meeting, too. At least that meeting was announced.
ReplyDeleteHold on, hold on. I'm a huge fan of getting worked up when there's cause. But if there isn't cause, then it's a buildup of cortisol--stress hormones correlated with lots of bad stuff--for naught. Because most of the board hasn't been sworn in yet--or hadn't by Friday, I'm pretty sure that meeting was by legal necessity unofficial. A lot of us didn't even know it was happening! And weren't there. And if we had been there, we wouldn't have been there in an official capacity. It was a meet and greet. I DO know that the next meeting, for which we will be official board members, is already on the calendar. Mark your calendars everyone! Third Friday of the month. I got unofficial minutes from the unofficial meeting I missed on Friday. It sounds like everyone was excited to meet each other and excited to serve. So, I hope no one's against that approach as a policy position. It's basically...excitement?
ReplyDeleteWell, given that the committee is so disorganized, unprofessional and ignorant of the open meetings law . . . I guess there's nothing to worry about, is there.
DeleteMs. Adler -- get your ducks in a row. Unruly ducks are not a defense to either malfeasance or nonfeasance.
As expected, complain about the previous and then its worse going forward.
ReplyDeleteRicardo for mathematical midgets: for each additional tourist added you yield 2 (or more) pissed off life long residents.
ReplyDeleteWe have Open Meetings Laws for a reason, and social hour, if it's just that, doesn't happen at City Hall. Was this meeting recorded? Were there minutes taken? What decisions were made? Ignorance of your obligation to the larger community is no excuse here. I call this an ignominious start, and hope we can expect better going forward.
ReplyDeleteAlso, why meet on Friday night? If you actually want input from people who work in tourism, the Board couldn't have picked a worse night to meet. Was this also decided on Friday at the mystery meet-and-greet? Yeesh.
This is simply inaccurate. I and several other new members were not in attendance. This to my knowledge was an informal gathering between whoever was available Friday evening. And as Tamar mentioned, many of us were not sworn in yet. My hope is that people can have some faith that we are all committed to working for the benefit of our community, especially when we haven’t even begun.
ReplyDelete