This week the city council will put the finishing touches on their planning for the September 28 Town Hall meeting down at the Olympia Center. One of the best parts of this, is that it looks like the city will finally put down in writing when they intend to have these Town Hall meetings regularly each year (late September, and the middle of January). Unfortunately, they're only going to hold two a year. Oh well.

To start with, here are the topics that will be covered during the September meeting, and who will be leading the discussions:

Recommended Topics and Suggested Councilmember Facilitation: Focus on the Council’s Goals as follows –
o Putting Sustainability into Action: Waste Management Plan (in particular how to achieve “zero” waste; and Wastewater Management Plan on-site septic options – Joe Hyer.
o Invest in Downtown: Recommendations from the PBIA and potential PBIA focus for 2007 – TJ Johnson and Karen Messmer.
o Improve Effectiveness of Government: Customer service aspects of a new City Hall – Mark Foutch and Laura Ware.
o Focus on Olympia as the Capital City: Olympia’s 2007 legislative action plan – Jeff Kingsbury and Doug Mah.

Here is the proposed schedule:

o 5:15 p.m. – Doors Open
o 5:30 p.m. – “Have a Slice” with City Council, informal discussion time. Informational displays would be set up on Council goals and other timely topics.
o 6:00 p.m. – Mayor’s Welcome
o 6:15 p.m. – Discussion’s Begin
o 7:45 p.m. – Discussions Wrap Up within Each Group
o 8:00 p.m. – End

The topics seem to be broad enough, that if you had a specific topic (ooooh, such as Wifi in Olympia?) you could find a place to talk about that. Unfortunately, they don't seem to specifically tackle any hot topics that would tend to bring folks out of the word work. Though, you can expect a healthy number of folks to show up.

What surprises me is that the planning for this and future Town Halls is an impression by city staff that people want fewer opportunities to sit down in a non city council meeting type forum to talk:

At the 2005 Neighborhood Town Hall meeting a suggestion was made for the City to consolidate or some how reduce the number of times we ask the community to turn out for meetings on different topics.

The active word here, I think, it "turn out." In the sense of "oh man, do we have to go to another meeting?" If the city got creative, they could encourage more discussion without having to set up a public meeting. They could use... oh what do they call those things... damn, its not coming to me now. Oh yeah:

Blogs.