The City Council held its second Town Hall Meeting for 2006 last night at Summit Place Senior Campus. Summit Place is a beautiful senior living campus here in Eden Prairie. It is owned and operated by SilverCrest Properties. SilverCrest owns and operates similar quality senior living operations in Minnesota and Iowa. The Summit Place property in Eden Prairie is one of their newest properties. It is a beautiful facility. Not only did they host our Town Hall Meeting last night, but they also provided us a pre-Town Hall Meeting meal as well. Good food. Good facility.
This was the Council’s second Town Hall Meeting this year. We had one earlier this spring at Forest Hill Elementary School. In 2004 and 2005, the Council held two Council meetings each year outside of our regular meeting space in City Center. The Council wanted to have the meetings in the community as a way of opening itself up to residents who might feel uncomfortable or intimidated by the formality of our City Council Chambers.
But the logistics of carrying out a full off-site Council meeting with sound, video, presentations, etc proved to be a daunting task. So daunting in fact that this year we changed gears a bit and decided to do the Town Hall Meeting-style meeting. In addition to the previous motivation of trying to provide residents a less formal atmosphere to engage their elected officials, the Council also wanted a meeting format where residents were actually invited to engage their elected officials. It may sound funny, but a City Council meeting is not always the best place for residents to engage their elected officials. As I said before, the atmosphere can be intimidating, plus there are the pressures of the night’s meeting agenda and so on. At our Town Hall Meetings this year, we have been able to accomplish both of the Council’s objectives. We held the meetings in comfortable, less formal community spaces and we dedicated the entire evening’s agenda to one thing: listening to our citizens.
By my count, there were about 60 citizens in attendance at the meeting last night plus another 20 City officials (elected and staff). The meeting started at 7:00 pm and we were there until about 8:30 pm. Many, but not all, of those in attendance were residents of Summit Place. The Summit Place program coordinator told me after the meeting how much their residents appreciated this opportunity because of them do not drive after sundown and this was the first opportunity that many of them had to interact with their City officials.
The Council and staff fielded a number of questions during the evening. What is going on with the timing of traffic signals on Flying Cloud Drive? Is there a better way to mark pedestrian crossings of streets? Where is the Golden Triangle? What is the future of Wal-Mart? Will the City ever build a municipal wireless broadband network? Can the City do more with cleaning snow & ice from sidewalks during the winter? Good questions. We gave some good answers too.
The mood of the meeting was positive and pleasant. Many thanks to Summit Place (especially Michelle Hubbard at Summit Place) for being such wonderful hosts.
