You’ve sat through plenty of board meetings and a few city council meetings. They are held in the ‘official’ locations, with assigned seating (real or imagined) and there’s a course of action you must follow.
What if you moved your meeting outside?
Send the previous minutes and financials out by email ahead of time and ask your board to review them at their leisure. You can tell them that during the meeting you’ll simply vote to accept and any small corrections can be done via email. Or at the next ‘official’ meeting.
Take a look at the agenda. What projects are you reviewing? Go to the place of the project! No projects? Add a walk through downtown to the agenda. Then walk around downtown. Here’s a few things you can do:
- Talk about façade improvement
- Discuss what could happen in that empty lot
- Visit a business or two
- Find places where a mural would be fun to look at
- Go to a place where a trail could be
- Sit around a couple of picnic tables and bring sack lunches
There’s value in doing this. Being seen in public, less formal discussions, possible solutions at the site of the challenge, camaraderie with your peers – all great results of moving the meeting outside.
Our video at SaveYour.Town – Boards and Officials – shares a couple of stories about moving the meeting outside. You’ll also hear about innovative ways to better serve as an official or on a board. It’s only $9 for the month of April.