Apologies that I can't attend the 13 August commission meeting. Thanks again to Brian and the Guild for this extremely useful augmentation to GMP and our planning generally.
I provided my input as LRA to Brian, and passed a copy to Justice so he can change or update it according to the new RA's needs.
Here's my input in my new role, to which I was elected after the commission's launch. I am posting it here so others can add or disagree: democratic governments only hold power in trust for the real rulers, our citizens.
GOVERNMENT NEEDS SURVEY
1. Please state your name and position.
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Jamie Palisades, Chancellor
2. How many members are currently part of your branch or organization? If not fully staffed, how many will there be when fully staffed?
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Four now. My office, two PIOs and a Treasurer.
When fully staffed, up to nine. There will be 3-5 others, including two groundskeepers, a content archivist, and one or two possible other roles. (No, I'm not already cooking something, but I may later, and in any case expect that expansion might lead to that.)
Planning mostly is conducted by the Guild, which has its own space requirements -- but fulfilled by the School, it seems to me, so I'm not commenting on them.
3. What specific needs does your organization or branch have, in terms of both amount and layout of space? For example, do you require office space, and if so, how much space and how many rooms? Do you require a meeting room? If so, how many members and observers will you need seating for?
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3a. The top practical need we have is meeting rooms, because we have various official meetings sometimes. That's fulfilled now by the Rathaus and Praetorium buildings.
-- The Rathaus is adequate, though I found it a little small for the best-attended RA meetings, and as a historic seat-of-government building for us, with strong connotations given our claim to tenure as one of the earliest self-governments, should in my view be preserved as an available government meeting space.
-- The Praetorium upper meeting room is plenty big. (It has an underutilized lower floor originally apparently designed for courtrooms too.)
I suggest we need to have at least one meeting space as big as the latter in CN ... so it's probably fine as is ... and that the Rathaus 2d floor space in NFS be a rough template for the minimum size. Of course, the Kirche and Amphitheatre also exist if needed for larger meetings, and we use the latter regularly for election debates.
I suggest that we plan for one meeting room, available to all major government bodies, in *each* sim (excepting voids perhaps). This will allow us to scale up for some degree of localized governance someday, if we go that route. The practice of rotating used by the RA and some other bodies seems to be communitarian and well received.
Is this fulfilled in AM by the Monastery? Not sure. I held one RA meeting last term in the Monastery's conference room, kindly hosted by that NGO's head Arria Perrault, to commemorate that sim opening and NGO's success. We appreciated the hosting, though I note that several found it a bit small. Particularly from the SL camera-angle point of view, it's narrow, and does not have the high-ceiling virtue of the Rathaus 2d floor.
Also, as a design issue of some significance, I expect we will need to re-parcelize official government meeting locations, so that land controls (freeze power for example) can be set uniquely for that group of parcels. There were unseemly episodes -- from several parties -- of inappropriate freezes and ejections last term. This is intolerable in a mature democracy. I mention this here because the special parcelization issue would put some constraints on anyone thinking in terms of vertical builds.
3b. There is no designated office for the executive branch. (Kindly ignore all jokes about the Schloss throne room .. and see below, on that.) I think there's probably some motivational benefit to creating a physical (so to speak) office for major officers.
Left to me, there would be two office spaces, one for the chancellor and treasurer, and one for the PIO(s). Each of those may evolve into a posting space for various plans, suggestion boxes, etc (rather like the Guild uses the School space). For now I suspect Sudane and I are getting along just fine without an official office location. :D But I suggest we plan ahead.
There may also be a benefit to a physical location on our sims where the content archivist can stash a copy of backup major CDS community objects. (As a backup to their avatar inventory, that is.) We would not necessarily want that publicly identified, though. I will discuss that separately with Brian and Aliasi Stonebender, our incumbent archivist.
3c. We have several "other spaces", like a public/welcome center installation at each sim hub, two Platz fachwerken in NFS and the dock in CN. I expect these to be revitalized, updated and perhaps consolidated during the next 2 months. I do think the functions -- a store for local goods, and information centres -- are in concept worth executing. They've been underused though. That won't be the case this term.
4. Does your respective organization have any specific requirements or preference in terms of location of your assigned space?
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Yes. See the above comments about traditional locations. NFS has some currency as the seat of our government. For branding and PR reasons I advise against changing that.
-- I'd not move the basic components of the Rathaus, including the NFS rent boxes, without a compelling reason. Sudane?
-- We may significantly update the Schloss, eventually, as was done (thanks again Moon & all) with the Biergarten. There are significant possible prim savings. However, we should think carefully about the symbology of putting a government in a former royal castle. Quite a few European and Asian governments found it more seemly to put artistic or community resources, rather than current government officials, into former throne rooms. :) Maybe they know something. See more, about the Schloss, below.
-- The vertical land permissions issue, above, makes executive branch offices under the Praetorium, a recommendatiion in the draft report, a possible problem.
-- I think that the government 'display' offices for any branch -- a place where postings or information are to be made availlable -- should be close to our high traffic areas, to encourage viewing and comment on displayed info, use of the suggestion boxes, etc. Maybe SC does not feel that need? But the RA and executive branches, at least, are public-facing. For that reason as well, I don't think I agree with the draft recommendation that the bottom floor of the Praetorium would make good "official offices" for either the RA or executive.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
I think the Schloss is going to need attention, too. Whether this commission or a future one wants to address this is up to this commission. See separate post here: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2056
Let's have the Schloss thread, if any, over there in its own space. If the current commission wants to take those issues on also, great. (IF it can be done without months of delay in the recommendations.) If not, that's OK too, finish this one up, we'll' start implemeting those, and then I will pose these Schloss-specific questions to the Guild next month. Either way, we're not going make significant changes to the Schloss without further public comment.
IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES
Please note the place that Brian's study has in our scheme of land use laws. I have posted on how those laws work here: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php? ... 872#p11872
In this case, Brian's commission fulfills the public consultation requirements for any major changes that are "in scope" (government buildings). But if we made significant changes, after the final report, that raised new issues unaddressed in the report (like, say, "change the Schloss"), we'd need to have another round of public notice first, at least.
So speak up now :) Not a theoretical exercise: we probably will *do* some of the stuff Brian is recommending, once the commission is finished. After clearly announcing our intent to do so.
regards Jamie P
