I was unable to clear my calendar for the irregular City Council workshop tonight. I see the recording is 3 hours long, and given the lame interface the city provides for video, it will probably be Saturday night before I can slog through it. (It amazes me that Dan Kott can provide perfectly usable videos in 15-minutes clips, while our city government insists that you have to watch from beginning to end without the ability to back up over parts you may have missed.)
Here's the crux of Killeen Up (and I hope the point was raised at the workshop): it's fine until someone claims they were unfairly singled out, and that's likely to be the case on the first citation.
It doesn't matter if a claim of unfair application of the ordinances has merit or not. An assertion that "I criticized the mayor and was cited for my grass being too long" will bring doubt on the process and eventually bring the process to a halt.
I hope the council will take this inevitability into account and make sure code enforcement is visibly and believably beyond the influence of people in power. If they don't, it's an idle exercise.
It seems that the city has no desire to make the meetings user friendly for residents. Less people viewing would seem to equate to less people in the know and hence less feedback/input. Kott is tech savvy and its too bad Killeen can't take cues from him. Transparency in its current form from the city is antiquated at best with regards to technology. Where are the city's tech experts when you need them?
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