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Committee reviews draft consent-agenda language and sets next meeting date
Summary
Committee discussed a draft ordinance to add a consent agenda to regular council business, including where removed items should be placed, whether staff should present consent items, and best practices from county practice; members also proposed a recurring meeting schedule and asked staff to post a written flowchart for the first-reading proposal.
The committee turned mid-meeting to a draft ordinance proposing a consent agenda for regular council meetings and debated how the new section should work in practice.
Staff introduced the draft consent-agenda text (prepared by Attorney Bennett and referencing a draft from Isabelle) and asked for member feedback. Members agreed that if items are removed from the consent agenda they should be taken up together at a single point in the agenda rather than scattered among reports; one option offered was to create an explicit agenda item titled “consideration of items removed from the consent agenda.”
Discussion focused on whether staff should be required to present consent-agenda items in person and on how council members should signal items they intend to separate. One committee participant described county practice of voting on all non-separated consent items first and then addressing separated items in a single follow-up round, and several members said that good pre-meeting due diligence by council members reduces problems with items hiding in the consent agenda.
The committee also addressed scheduling. After comparing calendars and staffing constraints, members agreed to meet on March 24 at 4 p.m. for the next session and to adopt a recurring slot (third Thursday at 4 p.m.) beginning in April, subject to clerk confirmation. The chair said staff would convert the earlier whiteboard discussion about first/second-reading flow into a readable document and add it to the record.
