Baseball’s All-Star game marks the theoretical half-way point of the baseball season, just as July 4th marks the half-way point Naperville’s city council meetings for the year. July 16 will be the first meeting of the second half of the calendar year so it might be a good time to review how Naperville’s city council meetings can be seen.
The Naperville city council meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the Naperville Municipal Center located at 400 S. Eagle Street in council chambers on the main floor. Meetings begin at 7:00PM and last about two hours. The shortest meeting I can remember lasted about 30 minutes and the longest concluded after midnight.
In contrast to former Mayor George Pradel, when meetings would begin after all the council members would come in late like it was a social gathering, Mayor Steve Chirico is punctual, getting meetings started on time, oftentimes with council members running to their seats during roll call.
Just like a ballgame, nothing beats being at the meeting in person to see the entire performance unfold. Rather than having the camera dictate what can be seen, your eyes can see what can’t be seen online or on TV, including a council member dozing off (it’s happened), council members chatting while a speaker is making a presentation, or council members on their devices checking scores, emails, or menus, again while speakers are speaking.
Meetings can also be viewed live, on TV via the government access channel, or online. You can also view previous city council meetings on the city’s website.
The City of Naperville will post the agenda for council meetings on the Thursday preceding Tuesday’s council meeting thereby giving all the opportunity to view topics to be discussed five days in advance. This Tuesday’s city council meeting is available for viewing.
What could be more fun than gathering the entire family around the TV with a big bowl of popcorn watching your elected officials talking endlessly about a topic only to have it tabled until a future meeting.
I’ve tried listening to the council meetings on TV in the past but the volume coming from the microphones was so low I could hardly hear the proceedings, and that’s with the sound way up! It wasn’t just one meeting; it was all of them. But maybe the city has fixed that issue by now. Or maybe it was on purpose.
This can be a problem with some of the live broadcasts I don’t know why, but the online videos do not have this problem. They are usually posted a couple of days after the meeting.