Taking minutes

The length of City Commission meetings has become a topic of concern for those sitting on the board, after commissioners questioned the structure of those meetings during two recent discussions.

At an informal meeting in January, Commissioners Stan Zimmerman and Suzanne Atwell agreed that discussion topics could be better ordered. Often, citizens were left waiting until late at night to speak on controversial issues based on the order in which items were listed on the agenda.

At a Feb. 2 meeting, Vice Mayor Susan Chapman bristled at the idea of extending an afternoon session by an extra half-hour for a particularly packed agenda. She suggested lengthy meetings were affecting commissioners’ ability to operate effectively.

“I have other obligations that I will take care of,” Chapman said. “I’m a human being and I cannot go without dinner and make good decisions.”

Meetings are divided into two sessions: afternoon sessions, scheduled from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., and evening sessions, scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. Over the past year, the evening meetings have occasionally lasted later than 10 p.m., highlighting the issue Zimmerman and Atwell raised.

On average, City Commission meetings are coming in longer than scheduled — eight minutes longer, to be precise.

The afternoon session is more likely to go long: during 15 of the past 23 meetings, the commission recessed after the scheduled 4:30 time. Those extensions were frequent, but usually not substantial — on average, the afternoon session ran over six minutes. In addition, the commission continued the early portion of a meeting for more than an additional half-hour just four times. The latest the commission broke between the afternoon and evening session was 6:05 p.m. May 19.

The evening sessions are more likely to wrap up early, but also more likely to extend significantly longer than scheduled. The average evening session is just two minutes longer than the allocated three-hour window, but individual sessions have been as brief as 40 minutes and as long as six hours.

Although they haven’t found any solutions, the commission indicated an interest in revisiting the subject at a future meeting. In the eyes of some commissioners, the solution could be as simple as having a better sense of which topics are likely to generate substantial public interest.

“I start getting butterflies when I start looking at some of the agendas and I know we’ll be here until midnight,” Atwell said. “That’s something we need to work on with staff.”

By the Numbers
2 hours - Scheduled length of afternoon sessions

2 hours, 6 minutes - Average length of afternoon session

2:53 p.m. - Earliest an afternoon session has ended

6:05 p.m. - Latest an afternoon  session has ended

3 hours - Scheduled length of evening sessions

3 hours, 2 minutes - Average length of evening session

6:40 p.m. - Earliest an evening session has ended

Midnight - Latest an evening session has ended

5 hours, 8 minutes - Average overall meeting length

2 hours, 42 minutes - Shortest meeting

8 hours, 10 minutes - Longest meeting