COUNCIL SHOULD REVIEW PROCEDURES OF MEETINGS

Municipal government, especially in a city the size of Cape Girardeau, is perhaps the purest form of representative government. A reason for this is its accessibility: the meetings are held locally with officials who share their constituents' city address. There is common interest in a common locale. We hope that never changes. However, we believe the current city council needs to revise the way its meetings are conducted, not to limit the access of citizens to municipal government, but to increase the efficiency with which the city's business is conducted.

At the last city council meeting, a woman, whose appearance at the gathering had not been previously an~nounced, spoke for more than 10 minutes on a just-presented task force report, and then expressed her intention to begin recall proceedings aimed at four council members. She was followed by a man who stepped to the microphone, also unannounced, identified himself by his last name only and warned of dire circumstances if Cape Girardeau (not the city council) didn't straighten out its act. At a meeting last month, Mayor Gene Rhodes, who presides at these sessions, moved to appoint an advisory group (an item not on the agenda and without consultation with other council members) by asking for volunteers from the audience.

Is this any way to run a city government?

We don't think so. We believe the citizens of Cape Girardeau could have the same access to government and be better served by the ~investing of some order in the council meetings.

The conduct of council meetings is governed in various ways. Missouri's Open Meetings Law proffers specific mandates on the city, assuring public accessibility of meetings and records. The city charter sets forth this edict: "The council shall determine its own rules and order of business." In a council policy handbook adopted in July 1987, Robert's Rules of Order is cited as a traditional guide to the handling of meetings.

Beyond those, however, the council itself and more specifically the mayor, who presides supplies the tone by which these meetings are conducted. And most people who are accustomed to business and other organized meetings (where fact-gathering and deliberation are the driving forces) would flinch at the goings-on in the City Hall council chamber.

We have some suggestions on this:

Anyone wanting to address the council at a meeting should notify the city manager's office in advance, even if it is during business hours on the day of the meeting. The person should also register a reason why they want to address the council; catching a council member cold with a question benefits neither the person asking nor the person being asked.

Persons who follow this procedure to speak before the council should be given a uniform length of time for their presentation, maybe three minutes, or five minutes at the most. This needn't be a complicated procedure; an egg timer or some such device would do the trick. Once the time is up, the speaker would either have to give up the microphone, request an additional period of time (subject to council approval) or respond to questions from the council.

This is not an outlandish demand on persons wanting to address the council. As a story in today's edition points out, other municipal governments have this type of requirement. Legislative bodies at the state and federal levels have similar rules governing citizen input. A time limit compels speakers to be more organized in their remarks. An open-ended speaking period invites repetition and reduces the chance of culling facts from rhetoric.

All persons addressing the council should be required to state their full name for the council records, plus any organizational affiliation that is relevant to the subject they are addressing.

Provisions for addressing the council should be published and disseminated widely. Citizens shouldn't object to limited speaking time or these other provisions if all persons (including those on the other side of an issue) are treated in kind.

In addition to these changes, we reprise here previously stated suggestions for improving council procedures. We still believe council deliberation would be enhanced if study sessions and council meetings would be held on separate days, as they were for a period before 1986. This would provide for more reasoned consideration of council business and less impulsive decision making. We would also urge the videotaping of council study sessions, where only the meetings are now videotaped. We believe this would bring even greater light to the deliberative process of municipal government.

Some people will object to these suggestions. Probably, they are the same people who tie up council meetings with long, redundant messages. Government should remain accessible. It should also not resemble the mayhem seen in recent meetings. We urge the council to make these changes in its procedures.