Wednesday, September 19, 2007

First Citizen's Leadership Class

Last night Jack and I attended our first class of the Citizen’s Leadership Academy. It was really fun and informative. First of all they fed us a great dinner complete with chocolate chip cookies for desert. Then Dr. Doug Selby, the City Manager explained how the council/manager form of city government works. He was very intelligent and obviously knows what he is doing.
Next the City Auditor, Radford Snelding, explained what his office does and said they mainly are auditing performance and compliance since an independent auditor actually comes in and does the financial auditing. Then Ted Olivas, director of the office of government, community and cultural affairs explained the advocacy, outreach and business functions of his office and told us that he actually goes to the legislature for their biannual sessions to promote the city’s agenda.

All of that was great information and then we got to go for a tour of the 10th floor which included Mayor Goodman’s office. Wow! Jack took several pictures which I’m sure he will post for all to see. Mayor Goodman had told me he was a collector and I sure would love to have some of his fabulous things in my collection. This was such a treat for everyone in the group, especially Jack and me.

Finally we got a complete tour of the city television channel, KCLV, channel 2. It is really a well equipped TV station and it doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything. The money to pay for it comes from part of the franchise fees paid for cable TV. Everyone got to appear both behind and in front of the camera. It was my first time behind one and getting to zoom in and focus on the panel discussion we improvised was truly amazing. They explained about green screens and blue screens and we got to see all the fabulous video and audio equipment.

The class was totally enjoyable and I am so looking forward to the one next week. MJ

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wish I was there.