Last year, I wrote a long piece about the problem of absenteeism on Waco’s various boards and commissions.
As I examined the records, I found that Jeremy Davis, the Democratic candidate for McLennan County Commissioner, Precinct 2, was absent nearly all his second term on the Parks and Recreations Commission.
I even turned this into a story on Texas Scorecard.
As a result of this story and exposing another lie of his, I had a part in helping to flip a seat held by Democrats for 125 years.
Ironically, the board he was on is what did him in.
The Parks and Recreation Commission was the only board that kept good attendance records to distinguish who came even when there was no quorum.
No other group did this, and it is a confusing mess. If you don’t believe me, look at the attendance records for all the other boards below (start at page 64).
(There’s also a problem with standardizing their statistics, such as with animal intake, euthanizations, and adoptions…but that’s a different dataset for another day.)
However, I don’t believe the board members or the City Council intentionally concealed anything. It was just what the current rules required, and the boards complied. This was an unforeseen, unintended consequence.
The problem is that it didn’t calculate or foresee who would not attend meetings and contribute to a failure to meet quorum, and the current system does not calculate it that way. It’s technically in the minutes, but that’s going to another level. Somebody really diligent would have to manually reconstruct the data from each of those into our own sheet to figure it out.
Let’s be real: the City Council doesn’t have time, patience, resources, or interest in that. And most citizens don’t either.
The issue went higher up. It concerned the overall city board and commission attendance recording systems.
It’s easy for me to complain on Substack, NextDoor, and Twitter. However, it’s much harder to figure out how to fix this issue, and as a data nerd, I wanted a solution.
First, I discovered who was in charge: The Waco City Council.
I went to a City Council meeting and spoke on this issue.
But my message was so out of place and nuanced among all the other topics Wacoans discussed—animal rights, Palestine, and climate change are what I can remember—that my non-controversial message on attendance policy got lost in the details.
At least it was good public speaking practice for public comment, though.
I was right that the Waco City Council oversaw the rules, but that was the wrong forum. I should have attended the Boards and Commissions Committee meeting.
So, I called the Secretary’s Office and found out about the time, location, whether they allowed public comment, how the process worked, and what I needed to bring—nine copies, one for the mayor, the five council members, the city secretary, the city manager, and the city attorney. The office was extremely helpful.
I also asked if the resolution I had in question was still current or had been amended. For some reason, it had been removed from the website I linked to in my original article on absenteeism. (Maybe the council didn’t like the attention it was getting.)
I requested records to find out what happened to that.
Yep, it was still in effect, just hidden from the public for some reason. It was available and marked up before they approved it and made the clean version.
Then, I got to rewriting my goal and requests for change.
I also emailed all of them. I still kick myself for putting Monday instead of Tuesday. Ugh, mistakes happen; we’re human. But they got the suggestions.
Then, the night before, I printed out nine copies of the resolution, the Parks and Recreation Commission’s model attendance form, and the Animal Welfare Board form, which is a mess and pretty similar to others that I used as the origin of the story, and placed a top page with my contact information and the summary of the request, its purpose, and specifics to change. All those are here:
I did a run-through practice with my wife to ensure that it made sense and that the documents were in logical order. Then, I went to bed early to speak at 9 a.m.
I bought a dozen donuts at Shipley’s because I figured it would be a good segue between a new year of business, New Year’s resolutions, and this attendance resolution. Plus, having people warm up to you is better than alienating them.
Way too often, I see and hear people make accusatory and hostile public comments that are emotion-driven while demanding things from their elected officials.
Not providing data or a solid case for something is not a winning formula. Before entering the room with guns blazing, it would be helpful to determine what competing interests, conflicts, rules, and resolutions are at play.
Yeah, it’s your right to yell, but being combative won’t win anybody over.
All I’m saying is you get more flies with honey—or, in this case, donuts.
I hoped it would work because the printing, donut, and gas costs to improve city policy and records cost about $40.
Then, they called me up about an hour into the meeting.
I was nervous, but I tried to be friendly to everyone.
It starts at about 59:20 in this audio link, and I made my presentation.
You can listen to it or see my last-minute scrawled-in notes before I went up
And that was it.
I think it was a success.
At least two members—Josh Borderud, especially, and Mayor Jim Holmes—were receptive. Although they weren’t supposed to comment, I could see that many agreed that standardizing attendance would help.
We’ll see what happens next month or in March when they propose the changes to adopt, but it’s good to see it on their radar and in line with one of the agenda items.
If we’re going to criticize our officials or lousy policy for unclear attendance records, statistics, and rules, we should at least make a reasonable attempt to correct them.
Fingers crossed.
(And, hey, even though I stumbled and was nervous, making a few errors along the way, at least this didn’t go as bad as this presentation at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court yesterday. This activist got removed by eight police officers for saying fuck during public comment – though another Commissioner taking part in the cussing at the end was the cherry on top. Enjoy!)