Sumner citizens with complaints, concerns or questions are no longer explicitly encouraged to join in on public comment during city council meetings. Originally, they were encouraged as laid out by the opening line of a passage in revised council rules of order, presented at a July study session.
“I don’t know if we want to encourage them, necessarily,” Councilwoman Cindi Hochstetter said after reading the sentence.
“Would you like that to be removed?” City Administrator Diane Supler asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Hochstetter said.
The language change—which does nothing to prohibit public comment as usual—is part of an overhaul of the language and some procedure of the council rules of order and conduct. The revisions were voted in Aug. 1.
“It’s something we do ever few years or so to make sure our council rules are relevant and working as well as we’d like them to,” City Administrator Diane Supler said.
The rule changes were approved by a 4-1 quorum, excluding vacationing councilmen Steve Allsop and Curt Brown. Allsop had indicated at the prior study session he was happy enough with the proposed rule changes to leave the vote up to the remaining council.
Incidentally, the meeting where two council members were absent marked the first meeting in which the council had the fully codified responsibility for excusing, or not excusing, the absences.
That responsibility once fell to the mayor. But during the period in March when the council was determining how to handle then-Councilman Matt Richardson’s absence, the council voted explicitly not to excuse him. Councilman Randy Hynek pointed out they had set a precedent, and a precedent it became.
Other changes to the rules of order were comprised of streamlined language intended to clarify procedure. A passage on council comment to motions was cut from nine lines to three, eliminating redundancies that would otherwise occur later in the section.
Other vague language was made more specific: “When a question has been decided” became “When a motion has been passed by council.”
Arguably unnecessary steps in procedure were eliminated: an item used to be placed on an agenda at City Administrator request, the mayor’s request, the request of two or more members of council, or a majority vote of council. The final option was eliminated, the “two or more councilmembers” clause being considered sufficient.
Under council norms—non-binding guidelines of behavior—changes were largely restricted to cleaned-up language, but two norms disappeared entirely.
The first was a courtesy norm authorizing a council meeting’s presiding officer to follow up on the question of a public commenter.
The second was a norm requesting that the mayor schedule “full and complete council meetings and not having work sessions when there are insufficient agenda items or overloading any one agenda with business items.”
