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Do we actually read the Bothell board agenda before the meeting or just wing it?
Last month I showed up to the zoning subcommittee meeting, sat through 40 minutes of debate on the 124th St corridor plan, and only realized halfway through that I was arguing about the wrong draft. The printout in my car was from August, not October. Nobody called me out, but the looks I got were enough.
That got me thinking. How many of us actually crack open the full packet ahead of time versus just skimming the summary email and hoping for the best? I know the board posts everything by Friday afternoon. I still catch myself scrolling the PDFs at 7am on meeting day.
Is that just normal for a volunteer gig, or should we hold ourselves to a higher bar? Has anyone else sat through a vote on a detail they clearly missed in the docs?
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allen.charlie1mo ago
I heard a city clerk on a podcast say most people on these boards spend maybe ten minutes with the packet, tops, and she can always tell who actually read it because they ask about page numbers. Our own planning guy mentioned the same thing at the last open house, that the staff spends hours putting those binders together and half the room is seeing the maps for the first time. Honestly the Friday posting is a trap, because by Monday the thing is 90 pages and you skim the first three and call it good.
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