Council mulls meeting changes

SANDPOINT — Speed, increased efficiency and a shorter response time is something the Sandpoint City Council will have in common with a sports car if it accepts a proposal to meet twice per month.

Council members opposed to the initiative argue that it bypasses a fundamental consideration: Public involvement.

 Sandpoint council member Stephen Snedden, who introduced the proposal to council, thinks having twice monthly council meetings will help city business get addressed more quickly and efficiently.

Snedden’s proposal calls for having formal city council meetings on the first and third Wednesday of the month, and eliminating the casual subcommittee meetings where residents air their concerns with half the city council before returning to speak to the full council.

In the present format, a resident attends a committee meeting to have his or her issue placed on the council agenda.

If the business item is forwarded to the council, residents give the same testimony and answer the same questions before the entire council at a regular meeting.

If the issue is tabled, residents must wait a month to attend the next meeting.

The refurbished process would allow residents to meet with council once. If they need to come before the council again, they would wait two weeks instead of the four or five weeks they must wait to attend once-monthly meetings.

Under the new format, two weeks are cut off the process and the subcommittee meetings would be eliminated, Snedden said.

“It would speed up the process and hopefully make council more responsive,” he said.

Council member John Reuter agrees that the present process can be cumbersome, but it includes public involvement, and that is vital to city government, he said.

“I think the current system of committees with council members and council meetings is more effective in terms of community involvement,” Reuter said. “I’m open and willing to listen, but that’s my bias going into that process.”

Community members are usually given three minutes to speak during the public comment period at regular council meetings, he said.

At subcommittee meetings, though, residents have a chance to converse with three council members in an informal and less intimidating format.

“What’s neat about committee meeting, it really offers a less formal setting,” he said. “It allows us to have an in-depth conversation with them.”

Conversation fosters dialogue and issues are fleshed-out and understood before they move to full council, he said.

“So we fully understand where they are coming from,” he said. 

The majority of cities in the Panhandle have twice monthly council meetings, according to the city.

From Bonners Ferry to Hayden and Post Falls, and including neighboring Ponderay, councils in other North Idaho cities have opted for speed and efficiency, at least theoretically.

“They seem to work out just fine,” Mayor Gretchen Hellar said.

Erik Brubaker, the planner at Ponderay, said the process clicks there.

“It seems to work for people here,” Brubaker said. “But, we are definitely a different scale community.”

Hellar supports the move to twice-monthly city council meetings.

Subcommittee meetings are supposed to function as filters for what is addressed by council. In addition, concerns are supposed to be refined before they come before council, she said.

Often, however, the raw information is heard by council, defeating the purpose of having subcommittee meetings.

“If it doesn’t function as a gate keeper, then why do we do it?” She asked.

If the proposal is adopted at next week’s council meeting, it will not be implemented for several months, Snedden said.