Let Us Elaborate
All planning, deliberation, and discussion on city issues will be open to the public.
But aren’t meetings already all public?
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Alabama law lays out the rules for open meetings and records. But there are many, many exemptions and work-arounds available, not only to the law, but in legal opinions and cases. This statement is meant as a reminder for elected officials to keep all their planning work out in the open EVEN IF THERE IS A LEGAL WAY AROUND IT.
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A good example from recent Homewood history is the 2016 $110M bond issue, penny tax and construction contract bidding the previous administration planned for two years in their own, closed-door meetings and which they attempted to carry out right after the 2016 elections. At that time the council president attempted to hand-pick a “task force” of council and other insiders who could meet in private and make decisions about the $110 million by excluding from the meetings a majority (quorum) of those boards.
Not only was the public excluded, but four brand new members of the council were barred from this select group of decision-making on one of the biggest spending projects in years. The task force was unlawful once those insiders began sharing their information with their ward mates (called a serial meeting), as some admittedly did. State law forbids governments from using exemptions as loopholes to sidestep sunshine laws. And with good reason. The situation allowed one bidder (Hoar Program Management) to complain that details of its sealed bid were being shared with a rival bidder, Harbert International, which took part in the two-year pre-planning.
“I am also at ease with putting our proposals in the public arena, since I learned prior to our interview that at least one of our competitors was made aware of our proposal amount. While this is unfortunate, it does not surprise to me given the strident support they enjoy amongst some members of the task force.”
As the mayor told the council when the Task Force was dismantled. “It’s never too late to do the right thing…”
As we head into another city election, we see other big plans taking shape and contracts and ordinances being discussed, with details at a minimum and much public grumbling: Public notices for a massive downtown rezoning were not mailed correctly, leaving a group of downtown business and property owners unaware of the impending vote. Amendments were piled onto the original ordinance, but public outcry has swung a commission vote against approval--at least for now.
We have a city budget topping $60M, a part-time mayor, no designated city manager, and virtually no community news reporting. In this climate, we do ask for attention paid to better communication. This includes at a minimum:
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agendas posted for every meeting, at least a week in advance, with subjects described in plain English;
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zoning and planning agendas posted with accompanying plans, drawings, maps and other explanatory material;
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minutes and videos posted quickly
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most public records available as website links, eliminating the majority of requests.
A visual online city calendar of events would be a simple, easily read, easily updated, central location to keep track of all meetings and events, and links to documentation. We will detail this idea in another section.
All official city correspondence will take place on city servers or stationery, and be subject to public disclosure.
WHY? What’s wrong with using gmail or work email accounts?
The most obvious answer is so official documents and records can be protected and kept in one central location. The city’s network has security, back-up, and built-in contingency plans in case of a crash or other threat to the system; it is overseen by a full-time paid IT professional. All data, including documents, email, and even voicemails should be protectively archived here to preserve a complete record of city activities and to keep business running smoothly.
Another reason is the city’s responsibility to the public. Not only are documents and conversations on personal computers subject to hardware failure or theft, they are also hidden from the taxpayers who fund them. Alabama law prohibits local governments from destroying records without a process. But what if those documents and letters didn’t make it into the record in the first place? How can officials be accountable to the voters, and how can the city be accountable to history?
All city council and committee meetings will be video recorded and available the next business day.
WHY? Would anyone bother to watch?
Yes, Homewood citizens would love to watch, just maybe not at 6 p.m. on a weeknight. In the last six months, Facebook live segments have been posted on Homewood City Voters group page, and every one of them has recorded between 500-900 views per video. Commenting on these clips shows that the public is engaging and asking further questions. The news clips in the same time period have gotten 1,000-2,000 views. We also request that committee meetings be filmed and available to the public.
To the city’s credit, the council meetings have been videoed and posted regularly for years, if not decades. There are relatively few views on most council videos, because, as the mayor himself has pointed out, the real work of the council takes place at the smaller and less formal committee meetings, where the public can sometimes join in the conversation or ask a question or two.
It would be of great value for residents to view these discussions at their convenience, especially since committee minutes record only the outcome, and not the substance, of votes. Watching its committees at work will promote more engaged voters and help reduce reaction against votes and outcomes that seem to come as a surprise.
From time to time, the city has kept important information hidden until the last possible moment required by law, such as a public vote. A good example comes from 2016, where the Finance Committee in October discussed the $110 Million bond deal for the first time on record, just one week before the council’s vote to approve it. The only hint the council was about to approve an historic tax-and-spend bond issue was the obscure agenda item: “Schools and Parks request for funding.” The vote was scheduled to take place before the new council was sworn in.
No amount of rule-making can stop deliberate secrecy, but a video record may have alerted some watchers to the deal being made, even at the last minute.
The city website will be upgraded to serve as the primary channel for public information and notifications.
WHY upgrade? It looks pretty good right now.
Yes, the current website is definitely more visually exciting than the earlier version and, if you know what you’re looking for, contains some essential information about your city, its services and staff. But that information is incomplete, hard to find, and often outdated. A prime example is the absence of a reliable section for posting city notices, announcements and other timely events. The city relies on four bulletin boards to satisfy its legal public notice requirements. We aren‘t calling for the city to stop posting in these public gathering places. We ARE asking the city to add the website to that list, and upgrade its design and organization for that purpose. We believe this change will require hiring a full-time web manager, a city employee with an email and phone number and accountability for getting the job done.
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The current website has great -- but unrealized -- potential. Contracts, draft proposals (drafts are public record), audit reports, plans, monthly paid invoices, planning commission minutes, police reports, arrests, property tax rate information, etc., could all reside on the city webpage. Most importantly, all the drawings, maps, and documents related to upcoming Planning Commission and BZA cases -- some of which are incredibly complex -- could be posted on the web page in advance of those meetings. Requests have been made and agreed to in years past, but still the public has to wait until a hearing is actually in progress before knowing the most basic facts about the subject to be decided. We ask for:
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A master calendar of city meetings - A calendar is a much more efficient way to organize a variety of meeting and event information than a series of web pages, text paragraphs, and links with stock photos. Assuming it is kept up-to-date, a calendar organizes a lot of information that can be taken in at a glance and avoid a lot of unintended confusion. Even links can lead to all the information known about each entry: place, date, time, contact info, drawings, maps and more. This is especially true when there are 11 councilors making rotating weekly appearances at subcommittees, external committees, commissions, etc., to say nothing of their attendance at associated political/governmental events in metro Birmingham. We need all of these meetings posted in a central location.
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A full-time web administrator - The website is currently managed by a part-time contract worker, who adds new information as officials request it. However, managing the webpage could be a model and accountable communications position if the city leaders demand it. There is room for improvement both in ease of use and information available. If any of the dates change after initially being posted, it is rarely updated on the city’s website, but it is posted on these aforementioned bulletin boards and sometimes on the door into city hall. It lacks information for citizens to call to report issues and Facebook is regularly used to ask what number to call for an operational function of the city. Using the city’s website to be the most up-to-date source makes the city calendar accessible to everyone and having information for residents FAQ’s to help themselves would improve both operations and be less of a burden on elected official’s time.
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Discussion forum - You only have to glance at community social media pages to see the need for a better two-way communications site for reporting road closures, urgent situations, utility work, and yes, lost dogs and cats. How about a Suggestion Box? A discussion forum moderated by city officials open to everyone is the goal. Corporate social media accounts should not be required to view discussion or questions about events and issues going on in the city.
The council will hold periodic public forums to hear comment on voter issues.
It wasn’t too long ago that the city hosted a yearly public forum on capital projects as a matter of policy. We support reinstating the public forum on capital spending along with a yearly mayor’s report on the capital spending situation. Further, we suggest that ward communications -- newsletters, meetings, links to social media accounts--be posted on the citywide website, and social media accounts devoted to official business and run by any official be linked there and required open and public to all. Further, we suggest the council’s “Special Issues” Committee is an ideal body to take periodic public comment--and even conversation--on the special issues concerning city voters.
Passed in 2010 as part of a 19-page fiscal policy, a forum was held in the spring before the fall budget to bring more light -- and control -- to the budget and spending process. The April 2012 forum filled the council chamber with residents calling for more “walkability,” and parks, and ushered in the era of sidewalk building that still continues. It was such a successful experiment that the city council the very next year voted 7-1 to gut, dilute or relax all of the policies, such as the required financial reporting and forecasting time frames, reducing the level of cash reserves and deleting the mandate for a long-term financial plan, among others. The council willingly voted to let the mayor wait until the last minute to present his budget, and only 30 days to review and amend it before the Oct. 1 fiscal year starts.
The vote also eliminated the yearly forum on capital spending. It was a good policy that lasted only two years.
The mayor offered many reasonable-sounding explanations for the financial and deadline changes, but none for snuffing out such an obvious public good. Except, when it came to their spending plans, they wanted as little public interference as possible. Council president pro-tem Peter Wright said the council should reinstate the public forum. Well, that was seven years ago. Let’s reinstate the public forum now!
The city will commit to an “open checkbook” policy, posting to its website a list of the expenses paid each month, and the payees.
Are you really talking about seeing the bills? Do other cities do this?
The amounts charged to the city -- and every government -- are public record. Taken together over 12 months, they make up the expenses part of the $55 million annual budget. This budget is already posted on the website which even shows the budgeted and “actual” expenses paid for previous years. So it’s not a big step to want to see the details, which are also public records.
So Yes! Other cities and states make the monthly invoices and other financial and budget information public and available to citizens to self-serve. It is becoming common practice for municipal governments to build Transparency Portals that build trust with the citizens who fund their bank accounts.
Our Alabama state government makes public a searchable database of checks. Next door, the city of Decatur, GA -- a comparably sized city of 22,000 -- offers a similar service web site. In Homewood, bills are reviewed before payment by different city councilors before the council votes them to be paid. The check details are already being organized--they just need to be posted for everyone to see.
Without this check/payment detail, only a financial professional or investigator can “follow the money,” as citizens are often told to do.
And what about that City Manager?
We believe reaching this level of transparency requires a change in current habits. Therefore we also support hiring a City Manager to unburden elected officials of the many daily chores of running a city. A City Manager position will help depoliticize the operations of the government and allow our elected mayor to handle the will of the people. Focusing less on the day to day issues and more on building a vision for a thriving, wonderful Homewood.