Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

chtechcomm - Re: [Chtechcomm] Petition to work with DEDC on wireless initiative

chtechcomm AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Chapel Hill Technology Advisory Committee

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Terri Buckner <tbuckner AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: Chapel Hill Information Technology Advisory Committee <chtechcomm AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Chtechcomm] Petition to work with DEDC on wireless initiative
  • Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 17:28:54 -0400

Gregg,

Unless there have been private conversations going on, only one person has expressed concern prior to your message and three others have said to add their name to the petition. As you know, the suggestion for sending this petition, under personal names rather than the full committee, came from our council representative. He also suggested asking the DEDC to submit a similar petition.

This has nothing to do with bypassing committee approval, undercutting teamwork, or not including new members. This is expediting a benign process and working within established town practices. If we act now and submit this with the agenda package by tomorrow noon, the manager will have the option of including this as part of the consent agenda and it won't take up the council's time on their last meeting of the year--which will be quite full of budget and other year end issues.

I fully support democracy and collaboration. But we are a committee that meets once a month so we also need to be flexible, especially when there is no cost and much benefit and the action is recommended by our council representative.

Terri


Gregg Gerdau wrote:

Terri,

As we previously discussed, I believe your idea has some merit and deserves the opportunity to be thoroughly vetted with the TC before any action is taken on behalf of the TC. If you would like to add it to the agenda for tomorrow's meeting, we could try. As several people have now pointed out: if, after these discussions, a petition to Council is in order, there should be sufficient time to present it as a Committee action for their 6/27 meeting, either via agenda or from the floor.

I say "try" because this is not a one step process. It has to fit into an overall plan for how the TC approaches the achievement of its purposes. Step #1 is "building cooperative interaction with Council and staff by establishing an atmosphere of compromise and give-and-take that works consistently". We'll make a good "jump start" on that with the Mayor and Manager tomorrow.
Step #2 is realignment of old subcommittees and establishing new subcommittees. This should be no surprise, as it is the basis on which I offered my candidacy to Chair the committee: "I believe in teams. They can be far more powerful than the sum of their individual contributors.". That can lead to getting many good things done without having too much discussion that leads to inaction. I'd like to propose two right away - open source (pilot) initiatives and community networking (wireless) initiatives. Although included in the Infrastructure Subcommittee's strategic plan, these areas are growing in activity and interest. We could also consider having a subcommittee for PR/communications.

We have new members who will need a subcommittee to team with, retiring members whose subcommittee slots are vacant, and a new chair and vice chair who may not be leading or permanently part of the individual subcommittees. We need to discuss with who leads and serves on each one. Looking forward, I would hope the subcommittees would work toward goals and report progress monthly. Frankly, I'm not sure I have a good record of what the existing assignments are beyond the Infrastructure Subcommittee.

Interaction with the DEDC might be a separate subcommittee, if that's what the TC decides, but I would start by proposing that it fits in with the community networking subcommittee.
With Best Regards,
Gregg
Gregg Gerdau
Chair
Chapel Hill Technology Committee
cell 919-593-0037
office 650-302-3500
efax 650-618-1578


------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Chtechcomm mailing list
Chtechcomm AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/chtechcomm




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page