Typically boring presentations dominate upcoming council session

There are certain things governmental entities do very well and then there are other things at which they are absolutely terrible at. At the top of that latter category is presentations. Suffering from insomnia? If you can find a governmental entity laboriously fostering on an imprisoned audience some form of presentation, get there as quickly as you can. I guarantee you will be asleep in minutes. It’s worse that being strapped in a chair and force fed Kenny G music for six hours.

What makes presentations by governmental bodies so excruciatingly painful to sit through are the slides used to accompany the presentation. I’m going to be focusing here on a couple of presentations that will be made by Hays County Tuesday evening to the Kyle City Council, but I am not singling out just Hays County for this criticism Kyle city government itself goes out of its way to make bad presentations. Every single governmental entity I have ever been involved with anywhere in the world does it. I spent almost a quarter of a century traveling around the world teaching various government, business, sports, etc. leaders how to manage a crisis, how to handle media interviews and how to make an effective presentation and, to be honest, I was never much of a fan of visual aids for a presentation. I mean, why go to all the trouble to work on an effective presentation only to tell your audience, in effect, "Don’t pay any attention to me. Just watch what’s up there on the screen."?

But, if the presenter was absolutely adamant about using visual aides and it could be determined that such slides would actually drive the speaker’s point across to the audience, I wholeheartedly approved of using visual aides, but only if they met two criteria. First, they must be visual. Second, they must be an aide.

Governmental bodies completely ignore those criteria. Instead, their slides consist of a lot of words, some printed in such small type that no one beyond the first or second row of the audience can read them. These are not aides — they are the actual presentation script printed out, or at least an outline of that presentation.

There are too many reasons why this is a wrong-headed approach to count, but chiefly among them is this: If you are going to make a presentation, doesn’t it make sense that you want the audience to listen to what you have to say? When you offer slides containing a lot of words, audience members are not listening; they are reading the words. And while you’re talking about the words at the top of the slide, they are reading the words at the bottom of the slide and asking themselves "I wonder what he’s going to say about that?" Or. "I wonder what that means?" The speaker is just wasting his breath.

Here’s a solution: For those insisting they must put all the information they are going to say on slides, simply offer the slides to your audience ahead of time. In fact, anyone who wants to can read two such horrible presentations before the council session because they are attached to the council’s agenda which can be found here. Read them yourselves. But the City Council should be told ahead of time to read them as well and then instead of forcing everyone to sit through your boring presentations, just be prepared to answer any questions council members might have from what they’ve read.

But here’s an even better idea. Let’s examine, to take an easy example, the very first slide following the title card of the presentation on the Hays County Road Bonds. The slide is titled "Projects: Precinct 1" and then it lists four projects: "CR 266 Corridor Improvements," "Dacy Lane Widening," FM110@SH123 Intersection Improvements" and "FM 621 Safety Improvements" and then under each listing is the budget for that particular item. Why not, instead of those words, have slides that contain (1) a map visualization to give the audience an idea of exactly where in the county this project is and (2) perhaps photos of the current state of those roads and an artist rendering of what it would be like when the project is completed? Now you have the audience’s attention. Now you have the audience listening to what you’re saying at the time you’re saying it. I know, that takes a little more work, a little more effort, and governmental entities like to take the easy way out, but the purpose of a presentation should not be just to inform its audience, but also to convince, to sell. In this case, you want the audience leaving the room convinced this is a worthwhile project that deserves widespread support and you should take every step necessary to make sure that’s exactly how they feel when they leave City Hall.

Now, the real bad news here is that the Council and everyone else who attends Tuesday’s meeting not only has to deal with this boring presentation, but four others including two more thrillers from Hays County officials. Here is just one of the eye-popping slides from one of those presentations, one involving "9-1-1 and Public Safety Dispatching Services for Police, Fire & EMS in Hays County."

See what I mean?

The other presentations the council and those brave enough to attend Tuesday’s session in person must waste valuable time sitting through involve ABA basketball, FM 2770 Stormwater and ESD No. 9. Among the other items council members must consider, providing they are still awake following these presentations, include:

• The appointment of Silvia Torres to the Ethics Commission.
• The first of two public hearings involving the voluntary annexation of 51½ acres in the Plum Creek MUD that, except for a radio tower, are vacant now, but on which the owner soon hopes to develop under the guidelines of the MUD’s R-2 zoning which allows for single family residences and duplexes but not apartments.
• The awarding of a contract for lighting enhancements at the Gregg-Clarke Park softball and football fields with Musco Sports Lighting, which has the distinction of recently installing all new lighting at Notre Dame’s football stadium, Ford Field (home of the Detroit Lions) and the University of Maryland’s XFINITY Center, the largest arena in the state and the home court of Terrapins basketball teams.
• The idea of granting, on first reading, a development agreement that will allow the owner of property located on Lehman Road, most of which is in the 100-year-flood plain, to rezone the property from agriculture to retail services so he can use it for purposes reserved for warehouse-zoned properties. It’s questionable item and only narrowly passed the Planning & Zoning Commission this past Tuesday. There’s a public hearing attached to this item.
• The second reading of an amendment to the city’s impervious surfaces ordinances. Although the agenda claims the Planning & Zoning Commission approved the amendment 5-0, that’s not true. P&Z commissioners went out of their way to approve an amendment that declared swimming pools were impervious,, which obviously, they are or they couldn’t contain water. The council, in a gutless appeal to the whims of homeowners, especially those in Hometown Kyle, have since changed the amendment from the one P&Z approved to declare swimming pools are not impervious. Go figure.
• A possibly lengthy executive session to deal with "pending or contemplated litigation" (i.e., someone is threatening to sue the city), acquiring land needed to complete one or more of the road bond projects, "personnel matters" (I have been informed that my suspicions this might have something to do with offering and trying to convince City Manager Scott Sellers to agree to a comparatively long-term contract extension are niothing more than flights of fancy on my part) and "economic development negotiations."