If it takes day one plus two more days to accomplish a task that means it is done by day three (1+2 = 3). So if the starting date was day two it would be done by day four and if it was day three it would be done by day five.
What would happen if, instead of using numbers, days of the week were used for the starting and ending points and it still took two days from the starting point to complete the task. If started on Wednesday the ending day would be Friday, if started on Tuesday the ending day would be Thursday, and if started on Monday the ending day would be Wednesday.
Now let’s just say that the task is the delivery of the agenda and materials to the city of Branson’s board of aldermen so that they can review the materials and prepare for their business meeting. In the past those documents including disbursements for review and approval, complex legal documents, zoning requests, 25 story building requests, a myriad of other things, and, most important of all, the agenda for their meeting have been delivered to them late on the Friday immediately preceding the Monday of the meeting.
The city of Branson’s newly elected mayor and aldermen are taking a novel approach to the governing of the City of Branson. They actually want to participate actively in the development of the agenda for their business meeting and get that agenda and the documentation relative to that agenda that they are expected to act on at their Monday night business meetings enough time in advance so that they have time to effectively review them before the meeting.
Obviously the first step in that process is to have effective participation of the aldermen in the development of the agenda for this meeting. It is, after all, the business meeting of the Brandon Board of Aldermen not the meeting of the city administrator, big developers, etc. In an effort to accomplish that the new mayor and the new aldermen working in conjunction with the aldermen that the public did not get a chance to vote on last election now hold what the Ole Seagull will call for lack of a better name the, “Alderman’s Agenda Workshop.”
It is a public meeting of the board and, since Mayor Presley has taken office, has been held early on the morning of the Wednesday prior to the next Monday’s board meeting. Among other things, items proposed by city staff to be on the agenda for that Monday’s meeting and other items proposed by the alderman are discussed. Two days later, generally late Friday, the agenda and accompanying documentation for the next Monday’s board meeting are delivered to the aldermen and posted, as available, on the city’s web site.
The problem is that there is not a lot of time between the time the aldermen get their packets and the meeting about 72 hours later. At the last agenda workshop an aldermen asked if they could get the packets at least a day earlier so that they could have more time to study the material etc.
The Ole Seagull thought no big deal, if, using whatever procedure has been in use up to this point, it takes two days after the meeting to get the packets to the alderman, just move the agenda workshop and everything that precedes it back a day to Tuesday and deliver the packets on Thursday or, better yet, move the work shop back to Monday and deliver the packets on Wednesday.
Boy was his thinking evidently wrong. Why there are “drop dead dates,” production schedules, deals that mean big money to the city, and it was actually suggested that if it was not left up to the discretion of the city administrator there would have to be an ordinance or resolution to make a change. Would someone precisely and concisely explain to an Ole Seagull why, if the current system being used is sufficient to get the “packets” delivered two days after the agenda meeting, the entire process cannot simply be bumped back a day or two so that the packets can be delivered on Thursday or Wednesdays? And that’s not a rhetorical question.
