It’s the 4th Monday which often means the Council gets a meetingless evening. Not this week, however. There is a special Council meeting (“special” incidentally, does not mean that there is something special or ‘specially important or ‘specially controversial on the agenda but only that the meeting is not a “regular” meeting happening on the 1st or 3rd Monday and requires public notice, etc. Sometimes special meetings are really special, but often the business is routine but out of synch with the regular calendar).
On the agenda this week: consider approving an outdoor dining permit for the Hideaway on Division Street (we approved changes to the ordinance at our last meeting to continue to permit these uses) and consider a grant proposal put forward by the Environmental Quality Commission to fund an energy coordinator and several energy conservation initiatives. As with the wind ordinance, this another backwards policy decision – that is, the previous Council accepted (but did not adopt) the Energy Task Force report and its recommendations are not (yet) the policy of the City. I’m particularly dubious about funding staff on “soft money” because the sustainablility of this practice is questionable. Opposing the manner in which decisons are made tends to make folks think I’m opposed to the subject matter, but this isn’t so – I am in favor of moving ahead with good energy and resource management, but we’re putting the cart before the horse again.
Then we adjouorn to a worksession where we consider the skateboard park again after the Council sent the issue back to the Park Board, a proposal for allowing administrative citations which was postponed from a previous worksession, and a discussion of the NDDC‘s Community Expectations policy.