Northport Village Council trustees discussed amending the rules of its meetings/committee schedules and what that would look like during its regular meeting Jan. 9.
While no action was taken by the council, village manager Jim Dyer presented his meeting amendment recommendation to trustees, noting that he was looking for direction to prepare a draft of the revisions for final consideration in February.
The council typically meets the second Thursday of each month, with the village’s four committees — infrastructure, waterfront, finance, and employee relations — meeting at separate times throughout the rest of the month. In Dyer’s January report, he explained how the process worked well at a time when the village did not have a full-time manager responsible for village administration, the preparation of the village budget, and the research and development of proposals for consideration by the council. Dyer said since he’s been manager, staff initiatives were frequently discussed at committee meetings, with the same discussion being repeated at the regular village council meetings.
“It also resulted in as many as five or six meetings per month, where only one of those meetings actually reached a final decision,” Dyer said in his report. “It has been my opinion that the system has been inefficient where a village manager is in place.”
The elimination of the village committees, with the exception of the finance committee, was Dyer’s suggestion, and to instead hold two full meetings of the village council per month. One of the two full meetings would be considered a committee of the whole for discussion items and the second meeting would be for finalizing decisions. The schedule would help to eliminate several meetings each month, make time for further public consideration, and would allow for the council to be included in discussions around important topics “that merit consideration at two separate meetings.”
Trustee Will Harper, who serves as a board member on the waterfront and infrastructure committees, said during the discussion that daytime committee meetings are not well attended by the public and are not well-received by the board, adding that in a lot of cases, the meetings interfere with other obligations such as work and kids.
“... I rather meet twice a month at night than have to go to committee meetings. We end up hashing up the stuff then we have to take it to the board anyway. It seems maybe not counterproductive, but not as efficient as it could be,” Harper said.
Trustee Laura Cavendish followed in Harper’s comment, explaining how she agrees with many of the points discussed but has her concerns. Cavendish, who also serves as a board member on the village planning commission, chair of the infrastructure committee, and member on the finance committee, said she doesn’t like the repetitiveness of talking about topics at committee meetings and then doing it again at another meeting. She said she also had concerns regarding the length of the second meeting in the month versus the shorter daytime committee meetings that have worked for her schedule thus far.
“I am not in agreement that I want it to be at nighttime. That does affect my schedule and it does affect my kids, where if it’s (meetings) in the daytime, they’re at school, which doesn’t affect me at all,” Cavendish said. “Then if we do an evening meeting and it’s a long meeting, how long are we going to be here? Because that concerns me also… it seems to me it would be better for staff too if it’s a time that they’re already scheduled to be here and paid to be here.”
Along with the schedule change suggestion, Dyer recommended appointing trustees that would act as issue liaisons with administration with the staff, as well as assist with the presentation of items at the working committee of the whole. Dyer said another benefi t to the schedule change would be arranging meeting times that do not interfere with township meetings. He recommended the working committee of the whole meeting be held on a day other than Thursday during the second week of the month, with the second meeting possibly being held on the fourth Thursday.
“This would give staff the added opportunity to not just present financial information to the council at a full meeting but would give us at least two additional weeks to review and analyze the data, as necessary, something that we do not have the opportunity to do now,” Dyer said.
