Routinely on the Monday before each of its regular bimonthly meetings, Wilmington City Council convenes in a small conference room on the first floor of City Hall to review and gain clarity on agenda items up for vote the next night.
Council members ask staffers questions for better understanding of the agenda–for instance, there may be inquiries about a rezoning request or the size of a slated equipment expenditure, which any informed staffer could discuss with them. From there, ideally, council members will have the knowledge they need to vote confidently.
But discussion at these review sessions might be going a little out of bounds, suggested more than one council member at this past Monday’s gathering. The observation: a question can lead to a comment, that comment can lead to an opinion, that opinion can lead to a rebuttal, and debate is born.
“Sometimes we [essentially] have a city council meeting here,” Neil Anderson, elected to the board two years ago, told fellow council members that morning. He said he might be as guilty as any of them, but asserted any debate should be saved for the regular Tuesday night meetings, which are widely advertised, televised, held in a high-capacity room and are generally much more in the public’s eye.
Agenda items hammered out and debated at the lesser-known Monday morning sessions are sometimes approved with slighter, or streamlined, discussion at the Tuesday night meetings, said Anderson. “And then people I talk to [say], ‘Well, you all just agree on everything.’ Well, we disagreed on Monday…. We’ve already had a lot of debate.”
What Anderson proposes: confine the Monday morning focus to any agenda-related questions council members might have for city staff so they can gain the knowledge they need to debate and vote at the next night’s meeting.
“I second that,” said Councilwoman Laura Padgett of the general idea, which was not up for a vote.
Councilman Charlie Rivenbark didn’t disagree with the concept, noting the public’s access to the non-televised review sessions is limited. Though they’re open to everyone, they’re for the most part only attended by city council members, city staffers, members of the media and a few governmental-affairs professionals.
“I think we either need to do away with this, or we can take it upstairs and put it on TV, just like we do our [regular Tuesday night] council meetings,” Rivenbark said. Those meetings are held at 6:30 p.m. on each month’s first and third Tuesday in the large second-floor chambers at City Hall. They’re televised on Time Warner Cable channel 8 and re-broadcast numerous times.
Council’s Monday morning agenda review meetings are held for convenience and edification and, like agendas themselves, are not required by law. But if the board is to meet and discuss the business of the public, it has to be done in the open, per a state law that provides only few exceptions (such as for closed sessions, in which attorney-client matters can be privately discussed). Mike Tadych, a media law attorney based in Raleigh, said Tuesday he didn’t see anything legally out of line with debates at the review sessions.
But they can serve other purposes, too, City Manager Sterling Cheatham noted Monday.
“The other thing I try to do … is bring to you topics that we are attempting to frame, to get your awareness, to get your reaction,” said Cheatham.
A “perfect example,” he said, was the supplementary discussion planned for that morning’s gathering. It dealt with some economic development ideas that council might want to support, including an initiative to develop a regional “brand” that would distinguish greater Wilmington among other attractive locales (related story). Those topics were specified on a public notice, which was posted and faxed to media ahead of the meeting.
“It’s not ready for any action,” Cheatham noted, “but will be at some point down the road if you think the idea’s good.”
Anderson said he did not mean to imply the city or its staffers were engaging in any nefarious activity at the agenda reviews, but added it might be worth empowering the city clerk or another core staffer to serve like a referee who could keep the discussion fairly confined.
Anderson advised officials to simply consider it for the time being.
Mayor Bill Saffo and Councilwoman Margaret Haynes did not attend Monday’s review.
Wilmington City Council’s regular meetings are held the first and third Tuesday of each month in council’s chambers at Wilmington City Hall, 102 N. Third St. downtown.
Its agenda review meetings, open to the public, are held the first and third Monday of each month at 8:30 a.m. in the Lord Spencer Compton Conference Room on the main floor of Wilmington City Hall.
Click here for tonight’s agenda.
Ben Brown is a news reporter at Port City Daily. Reach him at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
