Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Ms. Osborn moved on to the next item, which had to do with postponing an action at a councilor's request. This discussion had been requested by Mr. Pryor and Mr. Zelenka. Mr. Pryor wanted to avoid confusion. He thought some felt the tradition was one thing and others felt the tradition was something else. He was interested in moving the business of the City forward. The question for him was to what degree a councilor being able to attend a meeting, or not, should be able to slow down the business of the City. He did not feel that it was in the best interest of City business to not allow councilors to choose to not attend a meeting and to hold up a decision point as a result. Mr. Zelenka did not think it served the councilors well to second guess why a councilor was not at a meeting. He thought they should grant these requests so long as they were not being made to stall a decision. Ms. Ortiz thought that if they were doing council business and it might need to be postponed, they should know in a reasonable amount of time if they were not going to be able to be present. She said if a situation arose, such as a family emergency, then a postponement on a shorter notice should be allowed. Mayor Piercy suggested that they have a form to request a postponement. She thought that this would mean that councilors would get a formal response and would leave no room for guessing. Ms. Taylor averred that it was just courteous to postpone a vote if a councilor could not be there. She discussed some of the challenges that councilors faced when trying to call in and participate, ranging from equipment problems to time zone changes. Mr. Poling recalled past discourtesy in some denials of postponements. He felt they had moved beyond that. He said if a councilor was sent to a training, or something along those lines, it should mean an automatic postponement of decision points. He observed that agendas were sometimes a moving target and a councilor could not be certain in advance of what would be covered during a planned trip. This was of some concern to him, especially, since his annual trip in the fall was to a place where there was no cell service. Mr. Pryor had been interested in having a conversation about this item and arriving at some clarity about it. He agreed that they could not guess intent. He only wanted to eliminate the potential for abuse; he did not want someone to be able to "pop" something on an agenda for a vote because they knew that the people who would vote against it were not present. He wanted to be able to allow people to travel and to be able to postpone votes if they needed to. Mayor Piercy pointed out that there were legal parameters regarding the councilors' rights. Mr. Zelenka felt that postponements should be granted unless an action was time sensitive. He agreed with the Mayor that they should have a little more formalized process. Mr. Clark concurred. He did not want to bind the hands of a future council. He preferred to operate from a process that did not question someone’s intent. He thought they should agree that no one would bring up something for action until the full body had the capacity to deliberate on it. Mr. Poling agreed with Mr. Zelenka regarding items that were time sensitive and also that things that arose from real emergencies in the City should not be postponed. In response to a question from Mr. Poling, City Attorney Glenn Klein clarified that someone who had voted on the prevailing side could make a motion to reconsider the vote at the next meeting and, if the council agreed, and someone was absent, this could be tabled until everyone was present. MINUTES—City Council June 16, 2010 Page 5