Council headed back to bi-monthly meetings

The Libby City Council on Tuesday approved the first reading of an ordinance amendment that will make second monthly meetings a mandatory event for the council. The reading passed on a 4-2 vote.

“It’s important because in the past we’ve had things that need to be discussed and we’ve had parties that didn’t want to discuss, or didn’t think it was important to discuss and they cancelled the meeting,” Council president Brent Teske said after Tuesday’s meeting, where he filled in for an absent Mayor Doug Roll.

With the first reading approved, council members will hear the second reading, which would officially establish the amendment in the ordinances, during the August meeting unless Mayor Doug roll calls for a special meeting later this month.

After making the first motion to approve the measure at Tuesday’s meeting, council member Allen Olsen was the first to abbreviate his approval of the measure, saying that the additional monthly meetings will help council move forward with actions that had been bottlenecked by the once-monthly basis.

“Sorry it’s taken seven months to get this on the agenda,” Olsen said.

Teske said the second-meeting amendment took so long to get to a council agenda because past city attorneys, including R. Allen Payne and David Tennant, had never reviewed and approved it. Since Dean Chisholm was appointed city attorney last month, he was able to review the amendments in preparation for council action, Teske said.

“Now we’ve got Mr. Chisholm here, he was able to go through the entire thing, review it and finalize it from committee to council,” Teske said.

Roll, who was not at Monday’s meeting, said he had discouraged making second meetings mandatory. The number of meetings per month dropped down to once a month about a year ago, he said, although he didn’t want to comment on why he stopped scheduling second meetings.

“I just discouraged it because unless we needed one, we usually didn’t have the work load,” Roll said Thursday. “But it’s what they want to do.”

Council members Peggy Williams and Barb Desch voted against the measure. Williams was the lone council member to speak out against making the second meeting mandatory.

“I don’t read this as just being able to cancel it because you want to cancel it this time,” Williams said. “I think that eventually, you will find how burdensome it is to actually have to be here two meetings a month.”

After the meeting, Williams said she has been on the council long enough to see the meeting schedule change from monthly, to bi-monthly and back to monthly, and does not support council meetings subtracting from holidays.

“When it is in reality and it is the Monday before Christmas, people will start to realize, ‘Oh, this is really what I wanted?’,” Williams said.

Council member Brian Zimmerman said in the event that the second meeting’s agenda appears too light for city action, councilors could use that time for a work session to prepare for future meetings.

“I look at it as a time to get together for a working meeting,” Zimmerman said. “I look at it as a positive, myself.”

Other council members brought different points of discussion to the first reading of the ordinance. Council member Dejon Raines asked if changing the meeting basis would affect the city attorney contract with Dean Chisholm approved last month. Teske said past city attorneys have phoned into council meetings before and Chisholm could do so if necessary; Chisholm said he believes that matter could be addressed without concern.

Raines also said that adding the second meeting doesn’t address the primary issue with the current ordinance brought by Teske and Olsen: items falling short of the council agenda.

“I’m just trying to look at it from all angles here, but this doesn’t solve that problem that we’ve come across, not having items making the agenda,” she said. “If items aren’t on the agenda, you know we can have a meeting but there’s nothing on the agenda.”

“That’s next,” Teske said.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Teske said the council is currently waiting for several more ordinance amendments to reach the agenda for council action. The amendments that passed Tuesday’s meeting were deemed housekeeping measures, like eliminating wards because the council members are now at large, and extending the city police jurisdiction to five miles while the ordinance currently reads three. Aside from the mandatory second meetings amendment, all other measures were unanimously approved.

Teske said there currently isn’t a second meeting scheduled in July for the council to vote on upcoming amendments. Calling that meeting is only within the mayor’s power.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.