Bill Barnhardt, City Hall is listening.

Less than 12 hours after the Del Webb resident made some suggestions to rework council meeting agendas to help the public better navigate municipal government, Interim City Manager Toni Lundgren said staff was already working to put his ideas into place.

His suggestion to group related agenda items together so a person interested in a particular subject will be able to easily identify them will be in place by the June 21 meeting.

And that’s not the only effort the city is undertaking to help the people they serve better understand local government.

Lundgren said staff also wants to see if they can change water use listed on monthly city utility bills from being stated in hundred cubic feet rounded up to the nearest one hundred and instead state the exact gallons used.

That way residential water users that use gallons to measure water in everyday life will have a less abstract concept of the water they are consuming. It would also help them to have a benchmark in efforts to adjust water use during the drought.

And based on a social media posting by a Manteca resident on a water bill story, staff will explore to see if the current billing software for water use would allow year-to-year comparisons based on the most recent month instead of listing the per month use for the previous 12 months.

The resident pointed out a May 2021 to May 2022 comparison would give them an idea if they need to work on reducing outdoor watering tends to skyrocket in hotter months.
It is all part of a commitment the city’s senior management team has made to improve communication and transparency in a manner that is easy to understand instead of being bogged down in what some refer to as bureaucratic mumble jumble.

In the case of the city’s agenda, Lundgren noted it was long overdue for an update.
Legislative Service Director/City Clerk Cassandra Candini-Tilton and her staff are reworking “back pages” on the agenda that have been in place for years to see if it can be streamlined.

The plan going forward is to group items under the consent and action segments of the agenda by department. It is much like what the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors do with their agendas.

Barnhardt, in making his remarks during the public comment section of Tuesday’s council meeting, said the fact related items aren’t grouped together can leave some to believe the city is trying to either hide something or is being less than stellar in efforts to make it easy for people to follow city actions.

He pointed to the McKinley Avenue interchange project that have three separate items on the agenda. Instead of being grouped together they were dispersed throughout the agenda.

 To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com