Pulaski County Council members may soon get some training on running their meetings and dealing with the county’s finances.
During last week’s meeting, Council President Ken Boswell said a nonprofit group specializing in parliamentary procedures has offered to come to Pulaski County. “Just to give us a basic training on conducting meetings, keeping focus, making motions, things like that,” he explained.
Council members generally agreed it would be a good idea. Member Brian Young pointed out that while the rules themselves are important, the bigger concern is implementation. “It’s how we use them,” he said, “that we all agree that we’ll all live by them, and I think if we do have somebody come in and show us, even if it’s a councilperson from another county, come in and teach us what they do, we’ll all learn something.”
Boswell said the group would charge a nominal fee to cover travel expenses, but he agreed to look into the specific cost.
Council members also expressed interest in financial training. Auditor Laura Wheeler said there’s a group in South Bend that would provide the training at no additional cost, and she agreed to check their availability.
Meanwhile, Council Member Kathi Thompson said she’d like to work on a set of standard operating procedures for budgeting. “I’d looked at a couple of counties and what they do that clarifies their budgeting process and the information that they receive,” she said. “This year, the format that we received the budgets for each department was even different department to department. It was difficult to follow what it was we needed to know, as we went through the budget process.”
Thompson offered to give the other council members examples that they can discuss in a future meeting.
