The Mayor and Board of Aldermen are working to make city meetings more efficient and effective.
Mayor Diane Delaware has been working with board attorney Sarah O’Reilly-Evans to rethink how the Board of Mayor and Aldermen meetings are conducted when it comes basic procedures and performance management.
“We talk about things, we vote on things, and then they never get done,” said Delaware, during the recent board meeting.
Delaware said O’Reilly-Evans has been meeting with the city’s department heads to correct board agendas and records management.
Delaware said she was pleased with the planning stages of O’Reilly-Evans’ meeting with department heads.
“I want to thank you for giving me a bright spot in my day,” Delaware said, to O’Reilly-Evans. “Hopefully, everyone else also felt it was a very interactive session.”
Although more duties may fall upon the city clerk, Delaware said she is optimistic about the new procedures.
“If we implement this process, this will improve not only our meetings but the overall operation in our city,” Delaware said.
One thing that will change is that department heads will be required to write their own resolutions when it comes to city business.
“If I can write a resolution, and I have been writing them since I was in high school, I think we can all do this,” Delaware said. “Our government is run by order, resolutions and ordinances. It will be a rough start, but we are going to implement this.”
Delaware said the city will also be adding analytics to overall performance management.
“Very often, we come into these meetings with our department heads to talk about things,” Delaware said. “But we don’t have a scope of the problems defined. A review is not provided in an efficient way for the board to make a decision. There has been no verification that the solution we are about to vote upon is going to solve the problem.”
Delaware said most of the time, solutions and plans are not brought to the table when department heads present areas of concern.
“The department heads and I will be focusing on implementation,” she said. “We will create an implementation package that is customized to the needs of your town. When we say we are going to fix something, repair something, correct something or implement something, we must have a documented execution plan.”
