Mayor Dana Williams and the Park City Council next week will hold two days of meetings covering a broad range of topics during what is known as City Hall’s annual ‘visioning’ sessions.
The Monday and Tuesday gatherings will be the first substantial discussions involving two new members of the City Council, Cindy Matsumoto and Alex Butwinski. The sessions are scheduled at the Park Avenue police station.
Most of the meetings are open to the public, with the exception being a discussion about personnel scheduled to last from 8:15 a.m. until 1 p.m. on Monday. State laws allow a government body like the City Council to discuss personnel matters in closed-door sessions.
The Monday afternoon session could be especially interesting to City Hall followers, with the elected officials scheduled to meet with the city’s Planning Commission to discuss topics like the General Plan, which is an overarching document that guides growth within the city limits, the future of a stretch of lower Park Avenue where City Hall has land holdings and the Park Bonanza district. A talk about City Hall’s financial situation is also planned that afternoon.
The talks involving the Planning Commission are scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. on Monday and run until 5 p.m. A 75-minute discussion about financial topics is scheduled to start at 1 p.m.
The elected officials are scheduled to attend a reception with municipal managers and members of City Hall’s boards and commissions from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at Miners Hospital.
On Tuesday, meanwhile, Williams and the City Council are expected to review a series of position papers drafted by staffers. Topics will include City Hall’s environmental programs, an Old Town update, a briefing about the transit system and a review of construction projects that are anticipated in 2010.
The elected officials expect to spend Tuesday afternoon refining City Hall’s goals for the year and discussing which elected officials will monitor boards and commissions as liaisons.
Matsumoto and Butwinski, the winners in the election last November, were sworn into office on Thursday and attended their first City Council meeting as seated members that evening.
It seems unlikely that either of the newcomers will push for major changes in City Hall’s direction during the two days of meetings next week. Butwinski has been especially laudatory in his assessment of the performance of the municipal government.