City Council Meeting Analysis

A city council meeting is a regular meeting where the Mayor of a city, District Attorney, and other important leaders of the community, along with members the general public meet to discuss important issues. They can bring up their concerns or questions of a specific topic, they can bring awareness to an issue, while making proposals and ordinances to better the community in which they live. And this is exactly what took place in Redding, California on October 20th 2015.

I was not sure what to expect, when I started watching this meeting because I have never watched or attended a city council meeting. However, I was surprised by how fast an hour and half meeting actually went, and how much they covered in that short amount of time. This meeting

Shopping cart theft is a huge problem that not only the city of Redding is experiences, but the surrounding areas as well. They members of the community, and board members, are getting tired of seeing shopping carts that have been taken off of store premises without permission, being left on the side of the road, in ditches, and in random places. Therefore, they are working on passing an ordinances in which the stores are responsible to label their carts, and figure out cart containment. And then when unauthorized individuals are found with carts they then could be brought up on theft charges. Which would lead to the shopping carts being impounded for the stores to pick up. In this shopping cart discussion they had a speaker come up because he felt a few words in the written proposal needed rephrased. It showed me how such little words such as it meeting "shall" or "may" or even the use of the word “customer” over “unauthorized individual” can make a huge difference in the meaning of such a law and ordnance. This is something they want to implement, with a review at the 12 month mark to discuss and make changes if they need to. Once they voted and it was voted to pass, the District Attorney read this ordinance in. I personally think this is a great idea. I know when I am driving down certain parts of town there are carts everywhere, and it looks horrible. And I

Underage drinking and partying is another big issue for the city of Redding, and is a problem they are taking very seriously. They discussed a strict liability. This would mean that if the act of underage drinking or partying in which alcohol is involved, and it occurs on your property, whether you are aware of it or not, you are liable and could be brought up on charges for it. However, this strict policy would come with some pros and cons. Yes, it would make it easy for the prosecution because they wouldn’t have to provide proof that the property owners knew what happened. However, a negative would be that if a parent did everything they could, and let’s say went out of town and their kid was supposed to stay with a relative, but snuck away and had a party at their parents’ house anyways, that parent would still be found liable for it. Which doesn’t seem fair. So they also brought up that a clause should be in about prosecution discretion in cases such as these. Which would make a huge difference in whether they decided to take someone to court, or let them go with just a warning. Another point they brought up under this section is that public awareness would be key for this clause, so they could not say they did not know about it. They could make it a criminal or civil case for those individuals found guilty of providing alcohol to minors and facilitating their parties. However, after their