Future agendas for meetings of the Hanford City Council will be available at the Kings County Branch Library in Hanford and will be published by the end of the day on Thursday instead of the end of the day on Friday.Â
"When we publish the agenda, we currently print a hard copy for the counter," City Manager Mario Cifuentez said. "Going forward, we will print two copies and bring one binder across the street. It will likely stay there until we get ready to print the next council agenda."
In a previous conversation with the Sentinel, Hanford City Councilmember Lou Martinez said that he wanted to see a public agenda available for citizens at the library.
Martinez said Wednesday that having the agenda brought to the library would be much more convenient for interested citizens.Â
"To me, it’s just a way where you can read it at your own pace, your own time and get more out of it," Martinez said. I like it here [at the library]. I’m going to take advantage of it. If I need to look something else up, I can look something else up."
Cifuentez said the idea came up during a weekly meeting with Martinez and will be implemented for council meetings going forward. Cifuentez said he was glad to see another option for the public to get involved with city government.Â
"Even today when you look at demographics and how you get your information out there, there are some folks who don’t have social media, some folks that still want to see it in their mailbox," Cifuentez said. "Kudos to Mr. Martinez, because, candidly, creating more paper and creating it in a public place was something that I never would have thought of."
Martinez said he was very glad that the city manager and city staff agreed to have the agenda printed out and left at the library. He said that the open space of the library is more comfortable for reading than the closed walls of City Hall, and encouraged the public to take advantage of the library.Â
"I encourage my grandkids to do that and I encourage other people to do that," Martinez said. "Libraries are awesome. They’re here for the public, and we have to take advantage of them."
Martinez also advocated for Council agendas to be published one day earlier. so that residents and council members would have more time to read staff reports. Alongside a transition to a new agenda management platform, future agendas will be published by the end of the day on Thursday rather than the end of the day on Friday.
"There are times where you have three-day weekends, and it makes our lives simpler if we try to set it at Thursday and make sure that we have all the staff reports done," Cifuentez said. "The other thing is that it gives the public an additional day to review, and the council. Sometimes we have 400 to 700 pages with attachments, so it gives them an extra day to delve into that."
Cifuentez said that the first trial run of the new agenda software will be this Friday at 4 p.m. The meeting will be marked as a special meeting but will only be for councilmembers to understand and use the new agenda platform prior to next month's council meeting on Feb. 7.Â
