You can skip the commentary here and read the look ahead or last week’s wrap-up.
Id’ like to welcome the new readers and subscribers this week and to thank the folks who have reached out with kind words acknowledging my efforts here. It really means a lot. I haven’t made any attempt to “promote” the site—I don’t even post on Twitter much these days—so knowing there are folks sharing the newsletter and links is encouraging.
Second, I was asked about keyword notifications for agendas, either via tampa.gov or this site. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of anything through the city’s site. Currently the agenda isn’t the most machine readable page on the internet and creating any kind of tool to monitor it would be beyond my skill set. Getting it machine readable is on my bucket list. Until then, I will make an effort to better highlight the larger projects folks are tracking. Both by highlighting higher profile projects like the South Howard Flood Relief project or East Tampa Rec Center. It also got me to thinking about how I’m documenting the agenda items in the previews and wrap-ups. I highlight the agenda item number, but have been writing it as if someone is following along with the agenda as they are reading my notes. I will make an effort to include any project tittles and neighborhoods to make scanning the preview easier. But as I’ve said, with an agenda of 100 items, I don’t want to fall prey to trying to be an arbiter of what’s important and what’s not. But some things are obvious. I also need to add the search interface to the site.
I’m still trying to gauge what to include in the newsletter vs the preview vs the wrap-up and for now it’s just going to a be week-to-week call based on free time vs size and substance of the agendas. For this week, I’m going to wrap things up here and encourage you to read through the Look Ahead and Preview.
One observation for Council, and I may send this later in the week, I haven’t lectured them about their calendar lately, but last Thursday’s land use hearing went until 11pm. Fortunately their CRA meeting broke at 12:30 so they had a break, but there were quite a few continuations and mis-notices on the evening agenda. It could have gone several more hours and their attention on the last 2 items seemed diminished. It’s easy to get a light month in February and then spring break and forget all of the conversations about long days and agenda management. Little more than 4 months until the mayor presents her budget. 12 regular meetings/workshops between then and now not counting any summer vacation I’m not accounting for. I hope they use them wisely.
Hope everyone has a good week and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions or feedback. Good or bad.
I’ll leave with this link to a talk at Tampa History about Street Car History I’d like to attend.