Welcome back to The Agenda, a monthly column in which we highlight issues of importance in our community and ways you can get involved.
To begin this month’s column, we thought it might be helpful to provide some information on how you can watch, and take part in, local government meetings — without even needing to leave home.
For the moment we’ll focus on the two government bodies that represent the largest number of people, the Lenawee County Commission and the Adrian City Commission.
The Lenawee County Commission meets on the second Wednesday of every month at 1:30 p.m. in the commission chambers of the old courthouse, 301 N. Main St. If you want to see what’s on the agenda, you can go to lenawee.mi.us/agendacenter. This page also lists the agendas for more than a dozen different county boards and committees. Complete video of commission meetings is typically available within a few days, and the last time we watched one, we were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to follow what was going on.
The Adrian City Commission meets on the first and third Monday of every month (with exceptions for holidays). The regular meeting is at 7 p.m., but there’s always a study session before the meeting that’s intended to give commissioners a chance to hear reports on, and discuss, items that aren’t ready for action yet.
Agendas are typically posted at adriancity.com on the Friday before the meeting. Along with the agenda you’ll find a Zoom link.
Also on adriancity.com, you can find a link to sign up for city newsletters and press releases. City administrator Greg Elliott recently started putting out a weekly email update from City Hall every Friday. This also gets posted on the city’s Facebook page, facebook.com/CityofAdrian.
(Of course, Adrian isn’t the only municipality to publish an email newsletter. We’ve found the city of Morenci’s to be especially helpful. We suggest visiting your city, village or township’s website to see what notices you can sign up for.)
City topics: The city of Adrian is beginning its annual budget process. A possible water bill increase, to the tune of a few dollars per month per household, is one of the items under consideration.
There was also some discussion at a recent city commission meeting about the responsiveness of City Hall to resident questions and concerns. Local radio host Doug Spade spoke during the public comment portion and said, “I can’t tell you how many times we hear ‘Nobody at City Hall returns my call.’ ”
Does this match your experience? If you’ve had experiences with city government either way — bad or good — you can tell city commissioners about it by sending them an email. You can find their addresses at adriancity.com.
