City Commission meeting lengths prompt concern

Just past 5 p.m. Monday, more than a half-hour after the afternoon segment of the City Commission meeting was scheduled to end, the board was still in session, discussing why its meetings were running so long.

City Commission meetings are, in theory, supposed to last five hours and 30 minutes. The afternoon session runs from 2:30-4:30 p.m., and the evening session runs from 6-9:30 p.m.

Since May 15, after newly elected commissioners Jen Ahearn-Koch and Hagen Brody took their seats, the average City Commission meeting has taken more than seven hours. Only one has come in under the 5:30 mark. Three have exceeded eight hours.

“I think it’s just wrong for everybody to be here so late,” Commissioner Liz Alpert said.

The commission has discussed this issue before. On Sept. 5 — when the evening session didn’t adjourn until after midnight — Alpert suggested the city should hold its meetings earlier. If they started in the morning or early afternoon, Alpert reasoned, the commission wouldn’t be making important decisions after 10 p.m.

The proposal was met with concern from other commissioners. Brody and Mayor Shelli Freeland Eddie pointed out that city commissioner is a part-time job. Giving up an entire Monday is a big ask if a board member has another job, they said.

They also expressed concern about the ability of the public to comment on agenda items if more discussion was happening during the day, rather than in the evening. They agreed meetings were running too long, but Eddie didn’t want to bump up the start time if the actual runtime wasn’t going to be trimmed.

“I’m in favor of changing how we meet if it achieves a more efficient meeting,” Eddie said.

Commissioners had their own theories about how to achieve efficiency. Eddie wanted staff to give commissioners more input on which items are placed on the agenda, so multiple contentious items aren’t discussed at the same meeting. Brody also said staff could do a better job organizing agendas.

Jen Ahearn-Koch asked staff to give commissioners the backup material for the agenda earlier. If commissioners could ask staff detailed questions ahead of time, it’d take up less time during meetings, she said.

And Commissioner Willie Shaw suggested the board should look inward as it searches for ways to shorten meetings.

“We debate nonsense,” Shaw said.

He said the board spends too much time talking about things just to talk about them, when they could make decisions and move forward more swiftly. City Manager Tom Barwin made a similar observation in September, suggesting this configuration of commissioners has devoted a notable amount of time to debate.

A previous Sarasota Observer examination of commission meeting times showed that, between February 2014 and February 2015, the average meeting lasted 5 hours and 8 minutes.

“I think this particular commission is debating maybe a little bit longer and more than I’ve seen some other commissions,” Barwin said at the Sept. 5 meeting. “That’s something you need to guide yourselves on.”

After about 30 minutes of discussion Monday, the board tabled the item without a decision, vowing to return to the subject at a future meeting. And then, the commission postponed the last item on its afternoon agenda to the evening session, because the meeting had run too late.