Postscript: The automatic reply to my email below has led me to the 'open.government' webpage and thence to the Citywide Calendar, where future meetings of the IRC are clearly posted. These are partial information that I was seeking; for each meeting, specific details necessary to make the postings useful are pending. I do not know when these postings to the Citywide Calendar were made but I am sure that searches yesterday with the search tools on the two other city webpages mentioned below did not link to them.
P.E.
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Edmonds
To: jaherren@menlopark.org
Cc: city.council@menlopark.org
Sent: Sun, Dec 12, 2021 2:01 pm
Subject: Access to IRC Zoom meetings
Dear Ms. Herren,
I'm having several problems trying to join Zoom meetings of the IRC (12/9 and 12/11 and prior):
1. The Zoom ID number provided for the Zoom meetings this past week had a typo; Zoom responded that the ID including "-7735-" didn't exist. "-7735-" should have been "-7733-" apparently.
Even after this correction, the meetings didn't open on my MacBook laptop or iPhone; a promise to open "in a few seconds" was all I saw on the page where progress stalled. I waited but no connection was made.
2. Searching for "Independent Redistricting Committee" or "-- Commission" with the menlopark.org general Search tool brings up hundreds of citations of every Committee or Commission, of which only a few are about IRC, of which all are about past meetings, none about current or future meetings. Very unhelpful. The Search tool is not sufficiently selective for reducing the number of citations to the topic of inquiry.
3. The Council just passed a Resolution establishing the IRC and I read a notice about including IRC in the city's Meetings and Agenda webpages. This direction hasn't been implemented. IRC is not yet listed among the city's Committees and Commissions anywhere I looked; searching for it with the tool offered at the Meetings and Agenda heading is futile, despite links to this page that are present in notices published over your signature about this past week's meetings.
I would be surprised, if I'm the first to bring such problems to your attention. Please revisit the provisions you have made to publicize the IRC meetings and ensure that the policies of open government and public outreach are being respected.
Sincerely,
Peter Edmonds
Resident, District 3