Ex-city council member David Roy wrote a beautiful and necessary open letter to our newly elected city council members, reminding them of what they need to be reminded. Here’s the text:
Good afternoon, Fort Collins City Council members;I hope that you are each having a great day.My reason for writing to you is the upcoming Fort Collins City Council Retreat, and your decision to not televise or record this retreat.If this were a psycho-analysis session for City Council, with counselors and psychiatrists paid for by the City of Fort Collins present to help you heal after a bruising election, giving each of you the chance to vent or explain yourselves as a part of a healing process, the decision to not televise such a session would make sense, and be ethical.This retreat, however, is meant to bring into focus for Staff your priorities as a group for the next two years — the priorities you outline and support during the retreat will be the issues and future votes on your part as a group that will affect every citizen in this city, and will be the issues that are given the most credibility by Staff as they create their work plan for the next two years.A group of citizens has decided that in order for the larger Fort Collins community to have the chance of becoming informed about your policy discussions and likely future actions during this retreat, that they will bring their own video equipment to record your deliberations. Afterwards, these recordings will be uploaded to YouTube. It is disheartening that as a group you are choosing to not listen to how important it is to citizens, not only in Fort Collins, but across our country, to feel that access to their governments and transparency in their governments, are shelved for reasons having nothing to do with good governance and democracy, but for fuzzy reasoning that doesn’t square with officials being the elected servants of a community, be it at the local, state, or Federal level.Who is the best representative from the City of Fort Collins to speak with about technological capability questions that these citizens might have as concerns the operation of video equipment at the retreat site?For the service and effort each of you give to the citizens of Fort Collins, thank you.Best regards,David Roy
Good afternoon, Fort Collins City Council members;I hope that you are each having a great day.My reason for writing to you is the upcoming Fort Collins City Council Retreat, and your decision to not televise or record this retreat.If this were a psycho-analysis session for City Council, with counselors and psychiatrists paid for by the City of Fort Collins present to help you heal after a bruising election, giving each of you the chance to vent or explain yourselves as a part of a healing process, the decision to not televise such a session would make sense, and be ethical.This retreat, however, is meant to bring into focus for Staff your priorities as a group for the next two years — the priorities you outline and support during the retreat will be the issues and future votes on your part as a group that will affect every citizen in this city, and will be the issues that are given the most credibility by Staff as they create their work plan for the next two years.A group of citizens has decided that in order for the larger Fort Collins community to have the chance of becoming informed about your policy discussions and likely future actions during this retreat, that they will bring their own video equipment to record your deliberations. Afterwards, these recordings will be uploaded to YouTube. It is disheartening that as a group you are choosing to not listen to how important it is to citizens, not only in Fort Collins, but across our country, to feel that access to their governments and transparency in their governments, are shelved for reasons having nothing to do with good governance and democracy, but for fuzzy reasoning that doesn’t square with officials being the elected servants of a community, be it at the local, state, or Federal level.Who is the best representative from the City of Fort Collins to speak with about technological capability questions that these citizens might have as concerns the operation of video equipment at the retreat site?For the service and effort each of you give to the citizens of Fort Collins, thank you.Best regards,David Roy