Open Processes

Our Charter Commission is off and running! They hold monthly work sessions and usually have monthly public hearings. They have adopted a process that will work through the various articles of our City Charter. This allows them, and the public, to focus on a subset of the possible topics at any given time. Of course, they welcome any ideas that are submitted at any time.

They have a wonderful web site at www.OakRidgeCharter.com that has their calendar of future meetings and their minutes from the past ones. OakRidgeCharter.com also has a contact page which can be used to send in ideas and comments to the Commissioners.

Past Charter Commissions have done a good job of reaching out to the community and keeping us informed of their processes. The most recent prior Commission (the one that swept the Accountability Group) produced notebooks that were placed in various public places around the community. These included notebooks placed at the Senior Center and at the Chamber of Commerce. They placed two notebooks in the library, one at the research desk and a second one in the periodicals area to reach the more casual library visitor.

I think that our current Charter Commission would do well to emulate this tactic of reaching out the the citizens of Oak Ridge since not everyone is inclined to use their web site. In fact, I would consider adding a copy of the notebook to go to the Scarboro Community Center.

What we don't want is for the current confusion about the minutes to be the final word on this Commission.

If this Commission is planning to seek more open processes within the city, they should start at home and reach out in as many ways as possible. In this way they can lead by example.