Albion City Council goes deep into the night for recent meetings, and no one's happy about it

More and more people are walking out of Albion City Council meetings before they adjourn, but it’s not because they don’t care about their city.

It’s probably because it’s past their bedtime.

With the last three council meetings running an average of 3 hours, 32 minutes one councilmember is openly questioning how meetings can be streamlined and some residents are growing restless with agendas that have included as many as 19 items in recent months.

“Some of the meetings have been running so late that by the time we get up there I feel like you guys are ready to get out of here and all that happens is we make statements and no one gives any answers or feedback,” said Albion resident Don Cornell during citizen’s comment at 10:45 p.m. on Monday.

Councilman Garrett Brown said Cornell’s gripe mirrors what he’s been hearing from some of his constituents in Precinct 3.

“In the past I think meetings were done pretty quickly — people showed up, the council voted ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’ and you were pretty much done,” he said. “Now there is a little bit more deliberation on issues that in the past might not have been as thoroughly examined.”

While Brown is seeking input from City Manager Mike Herman on ways to speed meetings up he has thrown out two of his own ideas for people to chew on.

He said the city could look into purchasing some sort of timing devices to more effectively limit citizen’s comment and the city could provide council members with their meeting packets earlier than the Thursday prior to Monday meetings.

Brown said it would be ideal to receive the packets — which contain information and city recommendations on agenda items — a week before a meeting at the latest.

He said that would give council members ample time to ask questions and query experts on crucial resolutions, in turn cutting down the digressions from council members to clarify and analyze relatively unexplored issues.

Herman said sending out packets a week early would “make his life a lot easier” but would inevitably cause for last-minute agenda amendments that council members would still feel ill informed on.

“I have the ability under the charter to adjust the agenda up to noon on the day of the meeting, but the question isn’t so much about amending the agenda as it is (about) getting stuff out if it’s something they really need to look at ahead of time,” he said. “I don’t know that them getting their packets sooner is going to make the discussion any shorter.”

Brown said in the case of emergencies he would be fine with council amending the agenda last minute, even if it meant exhaustive discussions that might dissuade the public.

Herman said the city could also look into a “green light, yellow light, red light” timing device Brown said he has seen on C-SPAN, but it could only be used to confirm that citizen’s comments do not exceed the allotted five minutes.

“I don’t know if we need something that sophisticated or if it’s just a matter of the mayor paying attention to the time,” he said.
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Published in the Jackson Citizen Patriot on June 27, 2011