Anyone looking for more frequent updates and if you are on Facebook I encourage you to join the Springdale Community Group. Feel free to tag me in any questions over there too, I try to keep up with it as much as possible.
As for recent meetings, there are two items I wanted to highlight:
- Council Procedures
- Urban Farming Committee Work
Council Procedures
While not the most splashy work, it is important work – in July the Mayor requested a review of our Springdale rules for how laws are introduced. This is all spelled out in Springdale Code Section 30.03 if you want to read the language. The law spelled out how ordinances could be added to the Council agenda and be enacted.
One glaring concern is that the Mayor did not have the authority to ask that laws be acted on outside very narrow administrative ordinances of appointment. Our City Charter describes how our legislative officials (City Council) work with Administration (led by the Mayor and City Administrator). The way our City operations have worked over the years has evolved and this could cause unnecessary delay. To ensure the most efficient operation both Mayor Hawkins and I worked with our Law Director to update the language addressing how legislative items are prepared for Council meetings.
Where we landed was to expand the Mayor’s authority to introduce legislation directly while at the same time adding language to ensure the primary role of generating legislation and coordination between Council and Administration is part of the formal process.
The short summary is the rules on how local laws were streamlined to be more efficient, the Mayor’s powers expanded, while at the same time guardrails to ensure minority voices in Council could not be silenced (and at the same time also not hold up the work of Council) and the role of Council enacting laws remained strong.
Urban Farming Update
In my last update (link) I shared the work that had started to update zoning code around “Urban Farming” – the committee that was setup started with chickens (“Fowl”). The committee did extensive work including collaboration with City Administration and several departments looking at current restrictions, enforcement concerns, as well as what surrounding communities have been doing. They also conducted a survey of residents:
What else is interesting is how responses related to their own home’s lot size:
An important note is the statistical validity of the responses. Long time residents may recall a past City survey that was used as a partial basis of our City’s long term Strategic plans – this survey had responses on the same scale but also included information that help show that the sample was a good geographic and other demographic representation of our City (our past survey’s did not include this needed information – in short meaning I am confident that this does represent a real ‘voice of the people’ in terms of what residents want.
The Committee introduced legislation to update our zoning code to permit chickens – this was referred to the Planning Commission for review and to provide a recommendation back to Council to act on.
The process to change zoning code can take time but the work continues. Stay tuned!
If I can answer any questions just drop me a line or tag me on Facebook in the Springdale Community Group!
What do you think? Let your elected officials know!
email and phone numbers of all your City Council members are online – https://www.springdale.org/city-council/page/meet-your-city-council
and
City Administration as well –
https://www.springdale.org/mayor-clerk-council
or
Connect with your Neighbors –
https://www.facebook.com/groups/333111242219243
Related Links
Past Minutes and Agendas: https://www.springdale.org/meetings/recent
Upcoming meetings: https://www.springdale.org/meetings
Request Public Records: https://www.springdale.org/living-springdale/page/public-records-access