I’ve been making a bit of a fuss about the Nov. 22 retreat held by City Commissioners and Board of Education members. My main beef with it had to do with notice and access. I intended to let yesterday’s post be my last word on that specific meeting, but last night I received a statement about the retreat from Mayor Jim Baskett.

Setting aside my complaints about the meeting’s remote location and poor notice, I genuinely wanted to know whether officials thought the meeting achieved its goals. I first asked this of City Manager Peggy Merriss, who directed the questions to Mayor Baskett.

Since Mayor Baskett is the mayor, I figured I ought to give him a little room to discuss the intent and purpose of the meeting. I’ll let Mayor Baskett take it from here:

Mayor Jim Baskett

Dan, here is my response to some of the questions you posed to the city manager.

To the best of my recollection the retreat was first suggested by Marc Wisniewski, but, it was very quickly seen as a good idea by all of us.

Our goal was to find ways to communicate better and work together on issues that affect the whole community.

The general consensus is that it was a successful retreat and that going forward we will be approaching issues with more respect for our different roles, more trust that all of us are working to do the best we can for Decatur, and more commitment to improve our communications.

Jim Baskett, Mayor, City of Decatur

I appreciate the mayor’s response. I watched the live stream of last night’s City Commission meeting, and commissioners suggested these retreats might become a semi-regular occurrence.

That’s great. Let’s hold the next retreat in Decatur so it will be more convenient for people who live here. I’m sure there’s a local restaurant that would appreciate the catering business, too.