If you have ever talked with someone and you realize that they are not listening and don’t care, then you know what it would be like talking to the Naperville city council. They really don’t listen and for the most part they really don’t care. It’s quite evident during the Public Forum portion of the city council meeting. Typically up to ten residents can make a presentation lasting up to three minutes each. As you watch the city council members during this portion of the meeting, you get the feeling that the city council can’t wait for Public Forum to end. They endure it as if it were a root canal; painful and excruciating, a necessary evil.
Addressing the city council goes something like this:
- a city official calls out your name, sometimes pronouncing it correctly, and you proceed to the podium
- the council has the speaker out numbered 11 to 1 ( nine council members along with the city manager and city attorney)
- the dais is elevated so it’s as if the speaker is presenting to Mount Rushmore
- once the speaker begins, he or she is interrupted and required to state name and address.
- The speaker is allowed 3 minutes to make a presentation and is then interrupted by the time keeper. If the mayor likes what is being said, you likely can continue; if not, then you get a hard halt and you’re finished.
- During a speaker’s presentation, some council members use this time to look around the room, read, make notes, chat with each other, look at their computer screens, or perfect the art of the ‘sitting nap’; this is defined as looking like you’re awake, while actually catching a quick nap.
- The speaker is then given a cursory ‘thank you’ and that’s it. The whole process is typically an exercise in futility for the speaker.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a thousand pictures. Watch and listen as David Sinker nails this point when he addresses the Naperville city council.
David Sinker put the council on notice and did not hesitate with the strong facts he presented. As a resident for 26 years I never felt we had nothing but their way or no way mentality. The petition going around to put this district issue back on the ballot is being spear headed by the ones who may feel threaten that they will lose their control of a good thing. I voted at large and the people spoke loud and clear. They think progress may stop if they are not in control. They are wrong since maybe then we can stop the out of control spending of our money on goofy stuff like charging stations and and the Carillon bell which a few spear headed then dropped it on the residents to pay for it. The children’s museum was another bail out of tax payers money. What ever a consultant tells them they need ,they seem to feel they are obligated by doing us a favor by spending the money we work so hard for. In the end, time will tell why the rush to put 57,000 meters on our homes and business’ when nationally this is a issue still being debated. I hope we can start to change this in Spring 2013 by the voters being smart enough to remember the City of Naperville election commission hearing in January this year which proved the deck may have been stacked and the 4,200 petition signatures were just a few who wanted a choice. I am always amazed what public officials will do thinking no one really cares. Jesse Jackson Jr will soon find out who really does care.