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Update: The City has published the video of this meeting as well as the outcomes document, which gives the various important dates set in the meeting.

The October 16, 2006 meeting of the Mayor and Council was one of the shortest at least in my memory; it was over by a few minutes after 8:00 pm. There really wasn’t much on the agenda, but even then none of the Council members had anything to say beyond a couple of formal announcements in the “From the Mayor and Council” segment, which is unusual. Possibly they were expecting the closed session to take a while; possibly they had had their fill of meetings recently.

Outcomes of note:

• Assistant City Manager Tony Tomasello gave the City Manager’s Day laborer report. He said that:
  • Discussions with the County over the Memorandum of Understanding have begun.
  • He hopes to have the anti-solicitation ordinance ready for introduction by November 6
  • Staff is aiming for concurrency between the anti-solicitation ordinance going into effect and the opening of the day laborer center
  • The timing is such that the anti-solicitation ordinance may need to be enacted as emergency legislation
• Assistant City Manager Fred Felton spoke briefly about the voting machine issue. One thing that makes it a special concern is that municipalities such as Gaithersburg and Rockville use the same equipment as is used for State-wide elections, and will be holding municipal elections next year. If the State finally decides to trash the Diebold equipment, the replacement technology may not be ready in time. Gaithersburg has begun to discuss the issue with Rockville and will also approach Takoma Park and other municipalities that would be affected by this.
• The Council held their joint hearing with the Planning Commission on T-378. There was no controversy. Both bodies voted to hold their records open for a bit longer before deciding.

In addition to the content in the Town Courier (see my previous post here), one may get another view of these developments from the Kentlands Town Crier, which is a publication of the KCA Board; quoting the paper’s masthead,

The Kentlands Town Crier is the primary regularly-published means of communicating information of interest to Kentlands citizens. It is published by the Board of Trustees, which is responsible for the form, content, and policies of the newspaper. The newspaper addresses items of legitimate interest to the Kentlands Citizens Assembly. It does not espouse any political belief or endorse any product or service.

The September issue in particular has extensive discussion of the voting districts resolution. Also of note in that issue is a discussion of the Colonnades annexation, on pages 27 through 30.

Another document of interest is the voting districts resolution itself, which can be found here.