Politics & Government
New Mayor Wants to Speed Up Meetings
Ever take a pillow along to Palo Alto City Council Meetings? Mayor Scharff agrees that they're too long.
Palo Alto City Council Meetings averaged a whopping five hours in length in 2012. Mayor Greg Scharff, along with council members Larry Klein and Gail Price, think that’s too long. They’ve proposed limiting questions by council members to speed-up the process.
According to research by the City Clerk’s Office, council meetings totaled a mind-numbing 260 hours last year.
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Scharff, Klein and Price sent a memo to colleagues urging changes. It reads in part:
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Problem
Our Council meetings are taking too long.
Recommendations:
1. We should discuss this problem for one hour at our retreat on February 2.
2. We hope that voluntary changes by Council Members will reduce the length of our
meetings over the first half of 2013.
3. If there is no improvement we suggest that at a mid-year retreat Council consider
mandatory provisions to limit Council questions and debate time.
Discussion
In 2012 we spent 66 more hours in meetings than we did in 2008, a 34% increase. In 2012 we started 37 meetings before 6; in the previous four years combined there were only 23 such meetings. Yet in 2012 we still had about the same number of meetings ending after 11 or 12. The average length of a meeting jumped more than a half hour between 2011 and 2012.
We acknowledge that there may be many reasons for longer meetings: more extensive reports and more discussions from the public, for example. But the one variable we have direct control over is the time we spend as Council Members asking questions and discussing issues. We risk undermining public confidence in our processes if we can’t get this problem under control.
The City Manager has reviewed this memorandum and has no comments.
We therefore hope you will join with us in voting to put this matter on the Retreat agenda.
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