NLA-Orientation and Municipal Clerk's office 10/7/2009

Wide variety of people are participating, almost all working people or retired working people.   Some work for the city, some for other agencies.   Quite a few with grandstand agendas but hopefully the staff will keep them in check.  One person was from the Diario.

Speaker was Richarda Duffy Momsen from the Municipal Clerk, City Clerk and Municipal Court Clerk
Background:

• 76.7 FTE employees and 11.6 Judges   6 offices plus a 24/7/365 Warrant office.  Hours are on the web
• This office respons to open records requests
• Maintains record retention of City Council Actions
• Conducts City Council & Mass Transit Board meetings
• Elections
• Board Appointment records
• Clerk for El Paso Municipal Court of Appeals

Ways to become involved in City government voluntarily

• Serve on 42 City Board or Commissions (343 Board and Commission Members)-apply through City Council Representative
• Join/Launch a Neighborhood Association (better informed and gain greater clout)
• Join/Launch a Neighborhood Watch Association
• Attend City Rep's meetings
• E-mail, write or call City Rep or Mayor
• Attend City Council
• Report City Ordinance Violations to EPPD
• Vote in city elections  (May 2007 - 7.78% of voters cast ballots)

Call 541-4000 about

• Out of control weeds
• Junked vehicles and other rubbish accumulation
• Illegal construction or water running on right of way
• Loud parties past 10:00 pm
• Possible stash houses

Voice support or opposition to items posted ont he agenda such as zoning changes, new laws, policy issues

Alert Council to issues that aren't on the agenda by signing up for Call to the Public (but didn't provide info on how to do that and we were running out of time)

Gotta love numbers, they can be interesting:   

• FY09  268,780 tickets were issued for traffic violations, 72,902 for parking and 20,012 for city ordinance violations.  
• Of the money collected:  13,964,608 city revenue; 9,250,989 state revenue; 1,285,896 went to a collection agency. 
• Tickets can be paid through mail, online or in person or even via a payment plan (18,145 were granted).   Community Service for indigent or juveniles, 8,654 hours of community service completed.  Ticket consequences increase substantialy if you ignore the arraignment. 
• The police officer ALWAYS has the option to arrest instead of ticket and let them go.  Don't be ugly!
• Can request trial by jury but those 12 people can be quite mean and give the maximum.  Some defendents do win though.
• If you plan to appeal if judge rules against you, be sure to ask for a record be taken BEFORE the trial begins.

Clicker Training-In the Beginning-Tuesday 10/6/2009

Much of this was a repeat of yesterday.

• To permanently change the settings to keep the add in active: Tools, Settings, Presentation, Miscellaneous-Add in Always Loaded, True
• Anonymous means not connected to device.   Auto records device numbers and attaches them to the answer.
• Analogy slides have automatic entries or you can change them to your own.
• Scramble leaves out some letters.  Participants choose which combo fits.
• Response Card RF doesn't work
• Fill in the blank doesn't seem to work
• To change slide to Turning Point, existing slides must be the Title-Content layout if you do not want to do a lot of formatting.  the others won't work
• Home>Select>Editing (far right)>Selection pane to see items
• Then go to Turning Point ribbon, insert object, select type of chart.
• Wrong format, the insert Turning Part chart won't work.
• Turning Point online help.   It has detail for each step.

Turning Point clickers-Participant Lists

Attended workshop training on creating participant lists using Turning Point.  
Take Aways:

• Lists of the clicker tag numbers and device numbers are available electronically from IMS.  This would make it easier to associate a student name/ID# with the clicker. 
• IMS labeled the sets so that the instructor knows if they received all the clickers back from the students.
• Recommends anonymous unless it is important to associate names with clicker number.
• Hasn't explored groups yet so that training will be later
• Went over how to get the info from Banner into the clickers via Excel.  
• There is a setting within Turning Point to always start the add-in whenever PowerPoint is opened.   That way you don't have to use the Turning Point icon.