MORGANTOWN — Morgantown City Council is considering ways to reduce the amount of time it spends in session during its regular public meetings, held on the first and third Tuesday each month.
The issue, first raised by Councilor Ryan Wallace, was brought up about three hours and 15 minutes into a recent council meeting — a meeting that ran well past the four-hour mark.
An initial suggestion to start the meetings an hour earlier, at 6 p.m., was met with concerns from City Manager Paul Brake, who said it could create problems for councilors coming from work — particularly if council has a special session scheduled prior to the regular meeting.
A vote held on conducting a three-month trial of the earlier start time failed on a 3-3 vote. Councilors Rachel Fetty, Wallace and Mark Brazaitis voted in favor of the move while Jenny Selin, Ron Dulaney and Bill Kawecki voted against.
Brake offered some other options, including limiting the meetings to two hours, drawing chuckles from both members of council and the remaining audience.
Brake also suggested the possible introduction of a consent agenda through which more procedural items, such as approval of meeting minutes and routine expenditures could all be addressed with a single vote.
“Basically routine things, you lump them all together,” Brake said. “Any one of you could look at the consent agenda, and if there was an item where you wanted more information, you could remove it from the consent agenda.”
The Monongalia County Board of Education incorporates a consent agenda as part of its regular meetings.
Through its first year in office — 24 regular meetings between July 5, 2017, and June 19 of this year — the average regular meeting time for the current council is about three hours, four minutes.
Looking at just the last six months, meeting lengths have stretched to three hours, 24 minutes.
By comparison, the previous council had an average meeting time of roughly two hours, 15 minutes in the fiscal year prior.
Selin said council members could be more selective in the correspondence they share publicly during the meetings. Selin also noted council typically lived by an 11 p.m. cutoff time, but has exceeded that deadline of late.
“I think that needs to be the absolute maximum,” she said.
Wallace suggested possibly eliminating the reading of proclamations, to which Mayor Bill Kawecki responded, “I don’t think that’s our time waster. I think we could point to the appropriate people.”
Brazaitis said he’s not in favor of placing time restraints on council’s work.
“I think if the meeting has to go until 2 in the morning, then that’s what we have to do. This is the people’s microphone … We were elected to speak for the people,” Brazaitis said. “If it has to go until 2 or 3 in the morning, I’m willing to be here.”
In other news, council:
- Approved $33,876.84 for the purchase of a 2019 GMC Sierra pickup, plus an additional $4,222.86 to outfit the vehicle for the Morgantown Fire Department. The city is making the purchase through the National Joint Powers Alliance.
- Was updated on the city’s recent announcement that it will receive $7,500 in grant funding through the AARP Community Challenge for the placement of nine benches along High Street.
- Will hear from Mountain Line Transit Authority General Manager David Bruffy at Tuesday’s committee of the whole meeting regarding the authority’s Aug. 6 move out of the Garrett Street depot location.
