Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Government Procedure topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Charlestown council updates rules on closing public hearings, adopts 2025 calendar
Summary
The council amended council rules to allow (not require) the president to close public hearings and removed obsolete agenda-workshop language; it adopted an amended 2025 meeting calendar, canceling the Aug. 25, 2025 meeting and correcting a labeling error for Nov. 10.
CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — The Charlestown Town Council on Dec. 9 approved two procedural edits to its council rules and adopted the town—s 2025 meeting calendar with several date changes.
The council replaced a sentence in section 5.8 about public hearings so that the council president "may" close a public hearing rather than "will" do so automatically; councilors also struck a sentence in section 6.5 that referenced an agenda workshop the council no longer holds. The amendments passed unanimously.
Councilors debated whether department heads should be required to attend when their department is the subject of an agenda item; the town administrator said department heads are requested to attend when items affect their departments. Councilor Stokes asked the solicitor to review disaster-plan language elsewhere in the rules before returning a recommended text change.
On the meeting calendar, the council corrected a weekday label and considered removing some late-November and December meetings because of holiday closings. A proposal to strike both the July and August second meetings failed 1-4. The council later voted to cancel the Aug. 25, 2025 meeting and then adopted the 2025 meeting calendar as amended.
The council authorized the clerk to take actions necessary to advertise the rule change and to publish the adopted schedule.
