Howington to Council/Airport Scoping SessionCITYdoF $.
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MONTANA
November 30, 2009
To: Mayor Kennedy and City Council
From: Jane Howington
City of Kalispell
Post Office Box 1997 - Kalispell, Montana 59903
Telephone: (406) 758-7701 Fax: (406) 758-7758
Welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday. As you know, tonight we will be hosting a
scoping session on the airport. I wanted to provide you with some information on the format of
the meeting and what I hope will be take aways.
The meeting space will be set up to provide three spaces in the front of the room facing the
audience. These spaces will be occupied by members of Council, the facilitator (Lex Blood), and
the presenters. The sides of the room will be free so staff members can record the comments from
the public on large post -its.
The session is structured to stay within a 2 hour time limit. As soon as the Mayor calls the
scoping session to order, I will provide a brief outline of the meeting's purpose and introduce the
facilitator. The facilitator will explain the procedures and rules of engagement and then turn the
session over for a brief staff summary of the studies and legislative actions to date. It is our
intention to keep this part of the meeting to no more than 20 minutes.
The bulk of the meeting will be devoted to public comments which will occur after the historical
presentation and will be managed by the facilitator. The reason for this is to have the public
comments structured so that the issues and concerns raised are presented in a recordable form.
Thus, Lex will be working with each speaker (if needed) to help them put their issue in the form
of a question or concern. He will then clarify for the speaker what was written to make sure that
their comment was recorded correctly.
Once we have received and recorded the public comments, the facilitator will summarize the
public comment period and we will review how the gathered information will be used. As we
have stated, one of the reasons for this session is to permit the Council to hear all sides on the
issue and to gather all of the questions and concerns in a summarized written format. The
proposed second session in January is to provide the Council and the citizenry with the findings
and/or answers to the issues raised tonight. After the second meeting, I would expect the Council
to begin their deliberations and discussions on the future direction they wish to proceed in relation
to the airport.
As a reminder, the meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:00 pm and is being held at the Hilton.