Sunday Commentary: Public Needs to Weigh on Council Meeting Lengths

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Council-2012-Davis-sign

Over the past few years, I have stopped going to these council retreats held in July or August precisely because they have been a waste of time where the council has put forth vacuous and meaningless goals that they rarely adhere to and never implement.

This year however, it was different.  I went there to present to the council a draft of our Open Government Ordinance while will be presented on these pages on Monday.  I stayed there because there was a riveting discussion about council policies that were long overdue.

The biggest issue was the length of meetings, which bleeds over into other areas.  In my view the problem here is that the council simply takes on too much material to cover in a reasonable time period in one evening.

Toward this end, Dan Wolk and Brett Lee came up with a reasonable six-point plan that implements several of the Vanguard‘s suggestions from the past and also an intriguing new idea of periodic “Round Table Meetings.”

 

six-point-plan

There were a number of concerns made about going beyond bimonthly meetings.  The council did agree to schedule three meetings a month about four times a year – in the months where there are five Tuesdays.

The would accommodate Brett Lee’s idea, which is an innovative way of getting beyond the Brown Act restrictions on councilmembers have serial meetings and conducting business outside of the meeting.

His concern is quite simple, that on major issues of import, councilmembers often go in blind, they can’t discuss with more than one member and the format is such that it makes it difficult to have a discussion.  So his idea is to create a public meeting where they could take major issues and have preliminary discussions prior to agendizing an issue for action.

As they write in their proposal, “The Brown Act currently limits the amount of pre-discussion amongst council members prior to Council meetings. This lack of pre-discussion makes it more difficult to quickly determine the best solution and reach consensus.”

They continue: “By having a prior public ’round table’ discussion on the issues, all five council members can listen to their peers’ views, can express their thoughts and goals, and also get input from staff and provide questions for follow up to staff.”

This is a great idea, and another example of Brett Lee thinking outside of the proverbial box.

But, ultimately this does not address our chief concerns.  You can talk about streamlining the issues, efficiency, implementing various time markers to keep people on tasks, but at the core we try to do too much in too small a period of time.

The council, in fact, briefly considered the possibility of starting meetings later – at 7 pm – for a variety of reasons, but what became clear was that would push meetings to a later end time and that was not the direction in which they need to go.

In our view, ending meetings at a more reasonable hour involves necessarily holding the meetings more times each month.

The proposal made by Dan Wolk on this was to go to three per month.  However, the city manager balked at this idea, noting that there is a good deal of preparation for council meetings, it takes away from other duties, and he said that many cities have moved away from weekly meetings because of additional staff the city needs.

I have to at least question that contention – we are talking about the same amount of material, just spread out over more meetings.  I find it difficult to believe that the act of holding meetings is that time-intensive.

We believe this is an issue of critical importance on two levels.  First, public participation and the difficulty of working people and families to participate in late night items.

Second, the quality of the work product goes down.  Mistakes are made late at night, policy is not as clear, and in the end, I think we have to do more work because we meet late in the evening.

Our suggestions continue to be as follows:

More meetings per month where we have a limitation of one major item per meeting.  The council balked at a strict limitation, but did agree as a general rule to evaluate the items and attempt to make the agendas more reasonable.

Limitations on staff presentations are critical.  I think a summary of the staff recommendations, and an answer session of council questions should be sufficient.

We continue to favor a separate meeting for community award presentations – we believe that is time consuming and the city has opportunities to make them larger events if they could condense proclamations and awards to a monthly or even quarterly meeting that is dedicated to such things.

We do not favor limitations on speaking, either by the public or the council, as that infringes on the right to debate, speech and engage in discussion.

In our view, it was a good discussion, but this needs to be an issue that the public weighs in on more.  We simply believe that the council should meet more often for a shorter period time for a variety of reasons and we are not convinced that the council has gotten to where it needs to be just yet.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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11 thoughts on “Sunday Commentary: Public Needs to Weigh on Council Meeting Lengths”

  1. Marie

    I learned quite a bit from reading this, had no idea about the scope of the Brown Act. Thank you for the education. Wow. The 6 point plan sounds reasonable.

  2. Matt Williams

    I like the Round Table Meeting idea quite a bit.

    I like the Ceremonial Meeting idea even more. We need to recognize all the great things that are done in our community, and by our community, but under the current system that ceremony all too often results in agenda time problems. If this idea is implemented then we can “have our cake and eat it too” . . . celebration of community and effective time management.

  3. E Roberts Musser

    [quote]Limitations on staff presentations are critical. I think a summary of the staff recommendations, and an answer session of council questions should be sufficient.[/quote]

    I disagree. As a member of the public, I often learn a great deal from staff presentations. I think it would be a disservice to the public if these were dispensed with.

    [quote]We simply believe that the council should meet more often for a shorter period time for a variety of reasons and we are not convinced that the council has gotten to where it needs to be just yet.[/quote]

    Who is “we”?

    [quote]Toward this end, Dan Wolk and Brett Lee came up with a reasonable six-point plan…[/quote]

    I am still not clear from this article if anything was decided on, or is this still going to be discussed further? It seems staff is balking at having any more meetings; the public is balking at having late night meetings into the wee hours of the morning. The City Council appears to be caught in the middle.

    I agree with previous posters that round-table discussions and separate ceremonial meetings are an excellent idea. Meetings just should not go beyond 11:30 pm period. Good decisions are not made at that hour; the public has long since gone home.

  4. medwoman

    I am very much in agreement with the following suggestions:

    1) Round table discussions
    2) 3 meetings per month at least in the months with 5 Tuesdays
    3) Limitation to one major topic per meeting with the exception of the occasional urgent issue
    4) Separate meeting for awards and acknowledgements

    I also am very pleased to see that efficiency of the meetings is being seen as an issue worth addressing and thank the council for taking this on. A very good start for Brett Lee.

  5. David M. Greenwald

    “I disagree. As a member of the public, I often learn a great deal from staff presentations. I think it would be a disservice to the public if these were dispensed with.”

    Other than on really technical issues like water or the budget, staff reports are merely synopses of the written material.

  6. Michael Harrington

    From my memory, it’s very hard to reach good decisions based on public testimony and CC discussion and analysis after about 11 pm. The public is not around; the CC members and staff are tired.

    The fix: meet more often, for shorter meetings. Put less on the agenda.

    Set aside occasional ceremonial meetings with receptions.

    Keep the business meetings focused on business, and not padded with an hour or more of ceremonies and public recognitions.

    Also, the closed sessions could start earlier, or on different nights than the main business meetings. Closed sessions often go longer than anticipated, delaying the start of the open business meetings.

    In other words, the sooner the CC gets to the open meeting and City business, the sooner the ending time.

  7. E Roberts Musser

    [quote]Other than on really technical issues like water or the budget, staff reports are merely synopses of the written material. [/quote]

    Many members of the public do not read the written materials, or even have access to the written materials (don’t have computers, e.g. seniors). That is why the staff reports are so important. And as you point out, if the topic is technical, staff reports are indispensable…

  8. E Roberts Musser

    [quote]I’m really impressed by this Brett Lee guy.[/quote]

    I was impressed w Brett Lee the first day I talked w him when he was considering running for the CC. I encouraged him to actually run for office as did many others, and I continued to support his candidacy over time. I found him to be very thoughtful, and willing to think outside the box. I feel as if my confidence in his abilities was well founded, as he is proving to be an excellent City Council member in the very brief time he has been in office.

    But I would also note the entire City Council seems to be working extremely well together – there is an outstanding synergy there. I am ever the optimist that better decisions will be made 😉

  9. David Thompson

    Perhaps the Mayor and Council members could take turns doing the Ceremonial presentations part. Perhaps it does not need to be a formal Council meeting requiring all the council members and key City staff to be there.

    There could be a City meeting once a month where this all takes place and like many organizations you celebrate all the birthdays that month at one ceremony.

    I think the celebrations are taking up too much of many of the council meetings. They get rushed just to get the Council back on schedule. There should be a better way to honor the people and groups.

    David Thompson

  10. SODA

    I like David Thompson’s ideas. Rotate the CCperson for the ceremonial mtgs.
    I too am impressed by Brett. Met him at the DV candidate night and disagreed with something he said. He was respectful yet pursued. Had my vote. Very glad he won.

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