Written by Important! The two-day Council offsite Feb 27-28 is at Maplewood Golf Course, Magnolia room, not at Renton City Hall. The public is welcome to attend, and there should be comfortable seating. However the public will typically not be allowed to comment at the meeting.
The City has reworked their website, and the new version currently is missing an enormous amount of important information.
For instance, Public Meetings are not properly identified on the new Council Calendar. There is a two-day council off-site that is occurring tomorrow and Friday but not found on the calendar. I’ve attached the agenda below.
Fortunately, a Google search still brings up pieces of the old website, which contains the full calendar. But if I hadn’t been on Council for 28 years, I probably would not have known how to look for this.
For all the money spent on communication it’s disappointing that the city is not announcing the public meetings on the website. It raises questions about whether the meeting is properly announced. We did not have this problem in prior years and decades.
It’s also been difficult or impossible to find past meeting minutes, leases, project files, and other data. I hope the website is fully repopulated soon.
For the benefit of the public, I’ve attached the agenda for the Thursday and Friday council offsite meetings below. These are open to the public, although typically no public comment is taken.
Rentonwa.gov website brings readers here, where they can select the council calendar
When you reach this council calendar, you scroll down to this page to reach current meetings
The Council Calendar shows event for Monday the 24th, but nothing for the 27th or 28th
After a lengthy google search, I found this page, from the city’s old website. It has the council calendar properly linked
This agenda is available on the old website as found in google, but not the new city website
This agenda is found on the old city website found by google, but is not on the new city website
Full agendas can be found here:
You saw this on the agenda packet attachments for Friday right?
https://renton.civicweb.net/FileStorage/FC6030E931824BA49BF5AB2CEF513B14-800-09%20City%20Council%20Requests%20for%20Staff%20Assistance.pdf
But it says 2018, maybe just a refresher.
Yes, its an old policy that we probably adjusted slightly in 2018
Thanks for pointing this out. This item has me curious. This process always worked pretty well while I was on council. In practice, we’d cc the mayor on our questions of staff, and a staff member would respond reasonably quickly. 95 percent of questions were answered this way. If the staff member felt significant research was involved, we’d make a motion in council for a report on the topic, get a “second” from another council member, discuss it, vote on the motion, and then get the report. This way, everyone knew staff resources were being spent judiciously, assuming the Mayor was keeping the staff focussed on other city business that council had authorized and budgeted for.
Is this retreat meeting open to the public? I hope Council plans on addressing funding for the purchase of the Asphalt plant land acquisition in the greenest cleanest city 2.0. The agenda is not reflecting all of the glaring issues requiring immediate action. Water is at the top of my list and should be for all who reside in Renton.
Yes, this meeting is definitely open to the public. Note that the meeting actually takes place just off of Maple Valley Highway, at the Maplewood golf course.
I encourage members of the public to attend, as I did in the 28 times I participated in this annual meeting as a Council member.
However, there won’t be opportunity for the public to comment. Only to observe. But there will be comfortable seating for the public.
I just posted additional emphasis about the location and public nature of this meeting. Thanks for the question, Anonymous.
Open to the public. There’s coffee and snacks that are provided.