Anatomy of a City Council Meeting

In anticipation of this week’s city council meeting that focused on how to make our meetings more productive and more responsive, the City Clerk did an analysis of the past 12 months. Here’s what she found with regard to average time spent –

• Presentations – 13 minutes (Range 0 to 47)
• Public comment – 20 minutes (Range 4 to 56)
• Council response – 9 minutes (Range 0 to 17)
• Combined public comment and council response – 29 minutes (Range 7 to 66)
• Consent calendar – 14 minutes (Range 1 to 96)
• Public hearings – 23 minutes (Range 0 to 156)
• Discussion – 76 minutes (Range 15 to 203)
• Council comments – 14 minutes (Range 0 to 26)

The total meeting length averaged 175 minutes, with a range from 36 to 297 minutes (this does not include recesses or, when Hamilton was Mayor, time-outs). Eleven times meetings went over 3 hours. Only twice did they go under an hour.

Some notable lengthy sessions –

• Budget discussion (6/20/17) took 203 minutes
• Traffic problems discussion (2/7/17) took 196 minutes
• Public hearing on the Gateway hotel (2/21/17) took 156 minutes
• Public hearing on CDBG grants and alcohol license (9/6/16) took 90 minutes
• Resident satisfaction survey presentation (3/21/17) took 47 minutes
• OCSD presentation (5/2/17) took 29 minutes

This analysis was for the public portion of the Council meetings. In addition, the Council often meets in closed session which usually begin at 5:30.