Good news.  The Greensboro City Council has finally figured out where the first off-site City Council meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday, July 8 will be held.

It’s at the Barber Park Events Center at 1502 Barber Park Dr., not at the Ruth Wicker Event Center as previously announced.

There is no Ruth Wicker Events Center even thought the official City Council meeting schedule listed that as the location and it was the location announced by Mayor Nancy Vaughan. In the Barber Park Event Center there is a Ruth Wicker Tribute to Women which was evidently the cause of the confusion.

This meeting has gone through so many changes, that it’s hard to keep track.  It was originally scheduled for Tuesday, July 2 in the Council Chamber at city hall.

It was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, July 9 at what the city called the Ruth Wicker Event Center, but meant the Barber Park Event Center, however the building wasn’t available on Tuesday, so the meeting was pushed back to Monday, July 8.

Vaughan announced that the meeting would not be televised, but an audio recording would be made.  That statement created some controversy and currently the plan is to videotape the off-site meetings and broadcast them on GTN at a later date.  In this case the city could videotape the meeting on Monday and broadcast it on Tuesday at the usual meeting time.

The announcement that the City Council would start holding the first meeting of the month off-site was made by Vaughan at the June 4 City Council meeting with no public discussion by the City Council.

Vaughan said the members of Council had talked it over amongst themselves and come up with a plan to hold one City Council meeting in each of the five City Council districts.   It is unfortunately the way this City Council chooses to do the city’s business.

There are reasons why Congress doesn’t move its sessions around to all 50 states and the North Carolina General Assembly doesn’t meet in a different county every week, maybe the City Council, in time, will figure out what some of those reasons are.