Granite Shoals leaders holding informal meeting for residents to share concerns and ideas
JENNIFER FIERRO • STAFF WRITER
GRANITE SHOALS — Aware that not everyone can attend regular meetings of the Granite Shoals City Council, and that it’s a rather formal setting, city leaders are hosting a more relaxed gathering to give residents a chance to learn what’s going on as well as share their ideas and concerns.
Mayor Carl Brugger, councilman Jim Davant, and councilwoman Anita Hisey will host Coffee with the Council from 9-11 a.m. Saturday, March 25, at Crazy Gals, 8037 RR 1431 East. The event will include free coffee and donuts.
Officials also will have an English-Spanish interpreter on hand.
The goal is to have a setting that encourages conversations instead of the more formal council meetings during which residents are asked to state their names, addresses, and why they are addressing the council. In that setting, unless the council has that person already on the agenda, council members aren’t allowed to address their concerns.
That won’t be the case on March 25, City Manager Ken Nickel said.
“Bring your questions and your opinions,” he said. “It’s something for the council to get out there and give people a chance to talk to them.”
Nickel said Davant asked Hisey to be the third council member to join him and Brugger. Other council members wanted to participate but were told no more than three could attend or it would be considered an official meeting that would need to be posted.
“We’ll rotate them around,” Nickel said. “We’ll see how this works. We’re trying different things to allow our residents to talk to our council. Not everyone can make a Tuesday meeting, so we’re hoping more people will be able to attend and feel comfortable coming.”
jfierro@thepicayune.com
4 thoughts on “Granite Shoals leaders holding informal meeting for residents to share concerns and ideas”
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It is so easy to criticize but a little more difficult to actually help. Mayor Brugger and City Manager Nickel are taking “realistic” steps to maintaining and upgrading our city within the boundaries of a finite budget.
There is a loud and very vocal pack of dissidents that obstruct and obfuscate and complain on a continual basis. In my opinion, these dissident’s only contribution has been confusion and anger fueled by half truths and outright lies.
There is big money being spent to do nothing but put a “progressive socialist” in power in this town. Again, in my opinion, they have picked a most unsuitable person with a very unstable past to run as their champion.
The only worse case of un-qualification I have ever seen was handed a humiliating defeat in November!
Don’t know where you get your information but as usual you are wrong on many points. You have obviously never driven on any of the “Kings” streets and “President’s” Streets where a large number of tax-payers and their families reside. You also have obviously never been to many committee meetings as well. You are a troll only with little real substance. I have been active and on 2 committees and run for Mayor as well. My health has caused a short hiatus until matters improve.
Sir, You are a troll only with little real substance and even less knowledge of the truth and facts known by persons that have been actively involved for years. You can now go crawl back into your hole of ignorance.
BTW , the vast majority of those “vocal pack of dissidents” are very politically Conservative tax-paying citizens that feel their voices have been ignored for many years. The vast majority are also voting Republicans and far from “progressive socialists”.
Mr. Nickel seems to be adding respectful and significant leadership in his role as City Manager of Granite Shoals. He calls public meetings to get input as in this article. Then he gets grants and he gets things done. G.S. is looking better all the time. Could we clone him?
Mr. Nickel has failed the citizens in many ways regarding streets, drainage, and other local needs in favor of aggrandizing the city hall property. In fact, this idea is NOT his and was singly proposed by myself, when I ran for Mayor more than 2 years ago, in order for actually allowing many more of our working citizens to have more input and answers to concerns. However, my proposal was to have regular sessions at designated city parks within the various neighborhood areas to make it easier and more convenient for the citizens rather than the council.
Grants?? that is laughable. He has failed to access many opportunities that have been handed to him and the council. One 15 page document detailed a proposal to access a great many Federal Department’s grant opportunities for infrastructure, amenities, community developments, etc. and was provided 3 years ago at a council meeting so there is a record. Also a fact, he and the Mayor rejected a possible US Dept of Commerce grant program because it required the creation of at least one job for the citizens. After that, he went back to the old standby of the USDA as he has done for building water system situations being failed by the State of Texas.
The mere fact that a great many streets resemble a border colonia with children having no city recreational facilities in any local parks, require the children and youth of our town to play basketball and other games in dirty unpaved streets and broken streets badly needing repairs, speaks for themselves about his “getting things done” and “things looking better”.
Wake up and take a ride around more of this town, see and hear the truth and facts not just city hall propaganda.