City Council won’t decide on meeting start time until next year

City Council members are waiting until early 2025 before deciding whether to make their 6 p.m. start time a permanent part of their meeting policy.

The issue is one that has spanned several council meetings, as members decide whether to keep the 6 p.m. start time at regular meetings, or return to the 2 p.m. start time that had been the norm since 2020. The issue came up in October when City Clerk Donalynn Blazek-Scherler asked the council for discussion before she crafted the regular meeting list for 2025, which state law requires to be posted by Dec. 15.

The council voted earlier this year to return to 6 p.m. start times beginning with the Aug. 13 meeting, responding to residential concerns that a mid-afternoon council meeting made it difficult for many people to attend meetings. Evening start times had been the standard for decades, until council members voted in 2020 to move to 2 p.m. as a cost-saving measure that would lessen overtime costs for some city employees and utility bills for keeping City Hall open after 5 p.m.

City Attorney John Andrew said council action was cleaning up a city code, letting that code reflect what the council already is doing.

But, Ward 4 Councilman George Gill said council members don’t expect to settle the start-time issue until March. Officials have said when the council decided to return to 6 p.m. meetings, it came with the caveat the council would try the new time for six months, then evaluate it. Gill has said that means 6 p.m. meetings will continue through February, with the council to decide before then whether they would continue for the remainder of 2025, or return to 2 p.m. in March.

City Manager John Ratliff said there is no legal requirement that city code agree with the meeting start times posted with the state. City administrators have said the council has the option of changing those start times next year, if they want to return to 2 p.m. times. Blazek-Scherler said when the council changed the meeting time to 6 p.m. in August, she posted a special public notice telling residents what had been posted as 2 p.m. start times in 2024 was changed to 6 p.m.