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| Source: Oro Valley Granicus Information |
We've noticed an erratic pattern to the duration (in minutes at left) of Mayor Hiremath's 41 Town Council Meetings.
The meetings have run from a low of 33 minutes (7-21-11) to a high of over 6 hours (12-7-11). The pattern is uneven.
The meetings seem to be organized without any consideration to how much time the meeting is going to require. There have been a few meeting where there were up to 20 items jammed into the consent agenda.
Some of these items were worthy of full council discussion as we have noted in other postings. They should have been on the main agenda.
It also means that some Oro Valley Town Council Meeings are endurance sessions and that we, the citizens, are not getting the best thinking of those we elected so late into the evening. The council is making some decisions at a time when they may well be exhausted. The meeting already starts late in the day. Add up to six hours of a council meeting and one has an intolerable situation. Experience tells us all that this is wrong. Watch the confusion late in June's meeting when the Council really had no idea of what they were approving in regards to the Aquatic Center.
Mayor Hiremath promised when he ran for Council in 2010 that he would make council meetings shorter and more interesting. In fact, he said they were boring. He was right then. He is right now.
These are open meetings. Citizens attend. Citizens provide input. Anything over 3 hours is already long; 4 hours is an endurance meet; 6 hours is intolerable. Citizens leave after only a few hours. So much for the usefulness of an open meeting.
Is it time for Oro Valley to put a maximum time limit a council meeting? Is it time for more, not fewer council meetings?
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1 comment:
It looks like there were about 6 meetings that ran 4-5 hours and 1 meeting that ran for 6 hours.
When I attend a meeting in person, I tend to leave after 1 hour. When I watch from home, I notice that the audience thins out drastically at around 2 hours. When I watch a meeting at the 3-4 hour mark, the audience is down to about 2-3 people.
Clearly, having meetings that run this long is not conducive to allowing citizen participation. That's probably what Hiremath has in mind.
It's also not good for the council members. Who can still think clearly at 4, 5 and 6 hours into a meeting? That's way too much information to take in, analyze, discuss and decide upon at one time. And if they have brain-drain while making decisions, how is that good for the citizens?
This is just bad management!
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