A section of the Havasu City Ordinance titled “Council Requests” will be reviewed by the council next week in what is becoming a biannual tradition. That section of the Code was recently revised in 2019 and revised again in late 2021.
The Lake Havasu City Council will consider changes to how meeting agendas are formed and when those meetings will take place during Tuesday’s meeting. The item was first put forward by City Councilman Jeni Coke during the City Council’s annual planning meeting on February 1, and a majority of City Council members agreed to discuss it.
City Council members now have two options to request that an item be included in the agenda of an upcoming meeting. The first option is to create a motion in the “Future Discussion Items” portion of the meeting. If the motion is upheld by another council member, the code states that the requesting council member “will work with the mayor to determine the best course of action to process the request.” Her second option, available under current city law, is for a city council member to submit a written request to the mayor. The code states that the mayor will “work with city council members and the mayor to determine the best course of action to handle the request.”
During the planning session, Coke suggested that the Council discuss removing “future discussion items” from future Council meetings.
“We’ve covered this item before, but I think times have changed since then with a long call to the public,” Coke said. I think some people feel obligated by the call to put items on the agenda that may be outside the City Council’s jurisdiction, which would be great if they were within our jurisdiction, but the Council’s If not within jurisdiction it probably leads the public down the wrong path of believing there are things we can do about certain things when we can’t. I would like to discuss it.”
During council meetings, citizens have the opportunity to address the council on any topic within their jurisdiction. But Koch is concerned that once citizens bring up the agenda, councilors don’t get a chance to scrutinize the request or see if there are actions the council can take to rectify it. said.
“Staff didn’t have time, and the council didn’t have time to do background research,” Coke said. “Sometimes a whole new issue comes up, but no one is ready to know if it’s something they want to add to their agenda.”
Cork said when such issues were put on the future agenda by city council members in the past, citizens have expressed dissatisfaction when it comes back to city council, and the only discussion at the hearing was , was about the city having no jurisdiction over it.
“So how can we fix that?” Cora asked. “I don’t know if that means deleting this at the end of the agenda. We might have a discussion and go in a completely different direction. I’m good at healthy discussions. Change before I don’t think we were thinking about this when we did it, and now that we’ve been through it, I think it’s time to have a discussion and make sure that this is how we want to continue moving forward. If that’s what the board wants, that’s great, and if it’s not, maybe we can find a better way to do it.”
Alderman David Lane was one of the aldermen who favored having a discussion during the planning session.
“We’ve been playing around with this for a while, and in my opinion it’s not working as intended,” said Lane. “So we need to have a discussion and come up with something that works better. It’s not the right tool for the job, so we need to come up with a better tool. Look at what other cities are doing and We’ll see what happens.”
Lane feels there should be a mechanism that can be used to prevent items outside the council’s jurisdiction from being put on the agenda.
“In my opinion, we should never limit what people can bring in,” Lane said. “But they should only bring what is appropriate. It suits this board or that board. ”
Aldermen Nancy Campbell and Michele Lynn are concerned about current proposals to simply remove “future discussion items” from the meeting. He said he doesn’t think it’s the only remaining option available to aldermen.
“We’re going to talk about it and debate it, but it’s not written that any city council member could put something on there if they voted for it now. In written form to the mayor or mayor,” Lin said. “I don’t like it.”
Both Lynn and Campbell said the code wasn’t clear on what would happen if there was disagreement about the “best course of action” between the mayor, city managers and the city council members making the demands. rice field.
“We definitely don’t want the money to get stuck there because the staff and the mayor made the decision not to move forward,” Campbell said. It’s the voice of the people We have the right to put our agenda on our agenda We are all mature adults I respect all members of the Council if they If you want to discuss or put on the agenda something important to the citizens of Lake Havasu City, you have to be there, there are no conditions.”
Campbell said he doesn’t necessarily oppose excluding future issues from the meeting, but if the city council goes in that direction, alderman making a written request to the mayor will have the final say. He said he wanted to add language to clarify that He states whether putting it on the agenda is the “best course of action”.
Lin said he was open to considering that change, but said he felt strongly that future discussion items would remain part of future council meetings.
“I am convinced that it needs to be done in an open environment to ensure transparency,” Lin said. “Even if you go to the mayor and say, ‘I want you to take this issue up,’ and he agrees with me, it’s still done in secret.”
Lin also said he feels future agenda items will be an important part of the meeting.
“I do it in public because I want the public to know that I’m listening to them,” Lynn said. “If this was a problem that people randomly came up with, I could see this and deal with it. We have the ability to discuss it in public forums.”
Next week, city council members will also consider changing the start time of the meeting from 6pm.
Coke suggested that the council start meeting slightly earlier in the day during the planning session this year, and noted that some recent council meetings have been going on late into the night. She said it’s good for councilors, but they’re not the only ones attending the meeting.
“It’s great that we have good arguments, but we have to realize that sometimes things go on and on,” Coke said. There are children, there are staff working during the day, there are people who are there to do business with the Council, and they are there until dawn. earlier, perhaps at 5:00 or 5:30 p.m., so we could start earlier and finish a little earlier for those people. can.”
Lane said he supports moving meeting times forward, but said he wants people to have time to attend meetings after work. said he hopes it will start in
“We need to do it after working hours so that everyone can attend the city council meeting. can be faster.
