The Council is on its annual retreat; this year we're at the Garrett Creek Ranch close to Paradise, Texas. It is a working ranch. The accommodations are nice enough, not fancy but comfortable. (There's a flat rock for a table in the bath.) The meeting room is bright, so what else counts?

I got here about 4 p.m. so I could catch the Open Meetings Act training. We had a good dinner, the whole Council and the staff members that are here, and then went back to work.

We discussed Council retreat expectations and also policies and working together until almost 10 p.m. I'm sure staff members were bored out of their minds listening to us but they were polite and I didn't see any yawning.

There was a lot of discussion on how meetings are to be conducted. Having a professional parliamentarian for mayor made the outcome of that discussion pretty predictable. Meetings have always been conducted using parliamentary procedures but I'm sure everyone will notice that things will be stepped up a notch. I think the difference will most likely be in more information on procedures from the chair and more references among Council members. All good stuff to me.

And it could mean shorter meetings. Parliamentary procedures actually allow a speaker the floor twice and for only 10 minutes each time. The Mayor may choose to enforce this rule lightly, but maybe we will see the end of the ping-pong debate, back and forth comments that would drive normal people to the asylum.

If those exchanges disappear, this retreat will have been well worth it for me!

On the agenda early tomorrow will be personality profiles. It is useful information—it can make working with other personalities easier because there is some basic understanding of what drives him or her. It makes it easier to say, "I don't agree but I understand your perspective." A majority of the Council members have the same basic personality as me. It makes it easy to say that I don't agree and know they don't care.