County residents can help determine when the Oneida county board holds its meetings.
Recently, the board directed a committee and UW-Extension to put together a survey to help resolve an ongoing debate about meeting times. Twice in the last several months resolutions came to the floor to alter the standard meeting time of 9:30 a.m on the third Tuesday to a later time.
Oneida County UW-Extension agent Tim Brown says some would like to see later in the day meetings...
"...to promote public participation and make it possible for people who are at work during the day to either attend meetings or perhaps run for office, in case schedules before were prohibiting it. But there has been some disagreement on the county board floor about how the public feels about the issue..."
Some board members said meetings at night, especially in the winter months, would be a burden for members driving to Rhinelander from Little Rice or Minocqua. Brown says the short survey is aimed at seeing if the night meetings mean more public participation...
"....asking the public what time of day public meetings should be held at, and if they would be more likely to attend meetings if they were held at a different time and if they would be more likely to run for office...."
Brown says they hope to be done with the survey by early September. He says there are several public events happening this summer where they will be interviewing people in person. Brown says the survey will be on the web until early September. He says they would like to get 500 responses.
The survey will be on the Oneida county website, the UW-Extension website with paper copies at the Rhinelander, Minocqua and Three Lakes libraries and at the Extension offices at the Rhinelander-Oneida county airport.
