City Hall Notices

On June 3, 2003, the Ames Tribune published an editorial about the work of Gazette editor, Helen Gunderson, to make the public aware of issues at Gilbert's city hall. Although we certainly appreciate the Tribune's understanding of the issues up here in our town's government and applaud the Tribune's on-going campaign for open-ness in all levels of government, even in this little berg of Gilbert, we did call the editor to tell him of a minor error in the opinion piece. In it, the Tribune reported:

The photos Helen gave the Tribune were ones that she took early on the afternoon of Sunday, June 1. Customarily, the agenda for the upcoming Monday night council meeting would have been posted by then. However, on this day, some old material hung in the windows.

We have posted a sequence of photos below. You will note three pieces of white typewriter paper. On the right is the agenda for the June 5 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission. In the middle is the agenda for the May 29 city council meeting. That agenda includes a required public notice of a hearing to be held regarding the revised city budget. To the left is the required posting of the revised budget, and it is that piece of paper that hangs upside down.
  

Main entrance to city hall with the Gilbert Post Office on the left.
 

Right to left: agenda for June 5 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting,
agenda for June 2 council meeting, amended budget for June 2 hearing.
Lower left is closed sign. Middle is a flag decal with the Statue of Liberty on it.
To the far right is a small flag decal.
 

Amended budget for public hearing on budget held at June 2 council meeting.
 

Note that the amended budget was hung upside down.

Usually, the city council agendas and other official notices are posted at city hall and the farmers coop as well as on the door of city hall. In this case, we saw these materials only at city hall and that they were placed much higher than usual, making difficult reading for short persons. Need we say that our town's government needs to do a better job of communicating with the public.

Hanging a document upside down is a fluky and forgivable error, but when the mayor and council are making even greater errors in terms of communications and are acting like a stealth government, we cannot help but take note of an obvious oversight. Indeed, it is harder to illustrate or explain more serious errors that are not clear to the untrained eye. However, in our coverage of city hall, we get glimpses of evidence of what is happening and can intuit even more that is perhaps wrong.

The important thing is for the mayor and council members to do their work more publicly. If their deliberations and actions were more transparent, they would probably gain a greater amount of public trust. But then again, the mayor and council may have intentions that they wish to hide. And maybe they don't want to be transparent in what they do. Well, they serve at the will of the Gilbert citizens who can write letters to the editor; attend council meetings where they can simply be witnesses or speak up; find new persons to run for office in the November 4 election; get people to vote; and support new leaders when they are elected. It's all part of making Gilbert great.