City Council Sends Four-Hour Meeting Limit Petition to O&R
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — City Clerk Michele Benjamin wants City Council meetings to end by 11 p.m.
Council meetings have often stretched into the wee hours of the morning and her request by petition was discussed during Tuesday's meeting — which went 4 1/2 hours.
"I just feel strongly that after 4, 5, and 5 and a half hours of a meeting nobody's thinking clearly when it's midnight or 12:30 in the morning," Benjamin said. "We've gone until 1 in the morning and I just feel strongly that we should be able to process and get through and deliberate and have good strong meetings in four hours."
The petition would cap meetings to fours hours and was referred unanimously to the Ordinance and Rules Subcommittee since it would require a charter change.
To Benjamin's knowledge, the city has never put a time limit on meetings in the past. She believes that if they had, it would be in the City Council rules.
If this motion were to pass and the council ran out of time in a meeting, it is likely they would be able to take a unanimous vote to continue the meeting past four hours.
The last half-dozen meetings have had only two go past four hours: by 19 minutes on Nov. 10 and a marathon meeting of 5 hours and 13 minutes on Jan. 12. The meeting on Dec. 8 came close to the requested limit at 3 hours and 46 minutes; Oct. 27 clocked in at only 2 hours and 5 minutes and Nov. 24's at 2 hours and 50 minutes, while Oct. 13's meeting was a whirlwind at one hour and 13 minutes.
It's not the first time the council has addressed the duration of its meetings. Back in 2018, the council debated some ways to shorten meetings through rules such as limiting debate on agenda items or predetermining by vote the lengthy of meetings. But those options were never really explored in part because of worries that items would just get rolled into the next meeting — creating a backlog, longer meetings or the need for special meetings.
Some of those same concerns arose again on Tuesday.
Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey said he completely agreed with Benjamin's sentiment. He does want to make sure that if this were to be passed, business would not be pushed off too far.
Kavey believes that there are ways to get decorum back to where it should be so that the council can have efficient and effective discussions. He said achieving this may require a combination of things including a time limit.
Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi also feared that limiting meetings to four hours may push off business and cause missed opportunities.
"I'm just afraid that this is going to push things off and going to back us up more by cutting our meetings short," he said.
Morandi explained that if an agenda item was under a timeline such as grants or different projects, not being able to discuss the agenda item may cause a missed deadline.
"We signed up for this job, and so I feel that these meetings, I only meet twice a month by as a council, and the agenda is set by the council president and the city clerk," he said. "So I think myself we should go through the agenda."
Ward 1 Councilor Helen Moon suggested that if the council does take a vote to continue a meeting that they take it on the hour rather than having a meeting go on three hours past the intended end time on one vote.
"I do think that there are instances when there's really good conversation and ending it at that time might not be the best thing," she said. "So I really like the idea of taking a vote."
Ward 4 Councilor Christopher Connell understood Benjamin's purpose in submitting the petition but also recognized that there are times when things come up all at once that have to be dealt with all at once.
"I understand we all probably would like to be done at four hours," He said. "at times myself included."
Connell referenced his first City Council meeting about a decade ago. His first petition in the meeting was trying to stop Eversource's predecessor New England Electric from taking property away from residents in the Doreen and Harryel Street neighborhood. Also on the agenda for this meeting was a lengthy presentation from the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority and a council member asked if Connell's petition could be tabled.
Recognizing the urgency of the residents' situation as they were facing losing land to the utility company, the council decided to take up his agenda item. This made the meeting last more than four hours but Connell was pleased that the item was addressed at the time that it was.
"I don't think we should box ourselves in," he concluded.
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