Meeting format facilitates community center discussion

The long anticipated Liberty Lake Library and Community Center moved just a bit closer to reality during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, thanks to a new process borrowed from the private sector.

“It’a called a structured process,” explained Councilman Neal Olander. “It’s commonly used in the commercial world and engineering world.”

Olander explained that the process involved oversized sticky notes pasted on the walls of the council chambers. “It is a systematic way to make a decision. It’s much more efficient than traditional discussions.”

At issue is how the future facility will look and function effectively well into the future.

“In my view it was really a pilot program to see if people thought it was efficient and effective,” Olander said. “If so we could use more of these in the future.”

It was an incremental step, Orlander explained. “Obviously this has been in the planning stages for a couple of years now.

“We already have a conceptual floor plan,” according to Orlander, who along with Mayor Pro-Tem Patrick Jenkins borrowed the process from their day jobs.

“It’s one more step to get people to get consensus what the vision is for the building,” Orlander said. “We still a long way to go.”

Mayor Steve Peterson echoed Orlander’s view of the meeting that lasted nearly four hours, but accomplished a lot.

“I think it went really well,” Peterson said. “There was not a lot of public participation. We got some. It was more focused on the council.”

Talking to the public, Peterson said the input he received surprised him. “We enjoyed it,” the mayor said of response he received. “At least we know what you are thinking.”

Peterson said the meeting gives a clearer picture to architect Gary Bernardo of Bernardo-Wills.

“My hope is that Gary will do some preliminary sketches of what he heard last night,” Peterson said. “Bring something back to the council. Put something out there, and let them chew on it.”

The process began with each council member being given what Peterson termed “homework assignments.”

From there each council member provided a variety of input on features and design. That information was transferred to large sticky notes so they could be displayed and moved around to fit specific categories.

More meetings are planned in the future, perhaps special nights that will involve more of the community who will eventually use the facility that will be located behind the Albertsons store.

Community input will provide “another sign-off,” Peterson said. From there it’s seeing how the facility will be financed.

This was the first style of meeting where the council will devote their entire night to a specific topic.

The next meting July 2 will return to the traditional format.