Amarillo City Hall/Photo by Noah Dawson
Beginning with their next regular meeting, currently scheduled for Tuesday, June 13th, Amarillo City Council will meet at 3:00 pm instead of 1:00 pm.
This change in the meeting time was proposed by Mayor Cole Stanley at the newly elected council’s first regular meeting last week.
The change was billed as a balance between keeping the current time and moving the meeting to later in the afternoon. While the council seemed to generally agree that a later meeting time would be more accessible to the public, the benefits of keeping the current meeting time were mentioned, including that the current meeting time minimizes staff overtime.
Mayor Stanley also noted that the council could look to condense the meetings to mitigate this, stating that “for staff, for council, for everyone, I think we could shorten the duration of our meetings and move to a 3 pm [meeting time].”
Councilman Place 3 Tom Scherelen seemed supportive of the idea, though both Councilman Place 2 Don Tipps and Councilman Place 4 had reservations.
“I think there’s pros and cons that we need to consider,” said Tipps. “If they [the public] do want to make public comment, 3 o’clock may be harder to be here.” He further noted that, while some could take off early to make the meetings, “maybe more people can participate but also fewer people may be able to comment.”
Smith noted that he will “be flexible” due to the fact that he will only be on the council until the winner of the June 24th runoff is sworn in, but that he likes the current time.
Stanley also noted that the council could look at trying other times if the 3:00 pm time doesn’t work. “We could look at a 3 and then if we were still feeling like maybe we didn’t stretch it far enough, move it to four.”
According to a press release from the city, the “meetings will remain every other Tuesday at Amarillo City Hall.” This echoed comments made last week by Mayor Stanley, who stated that they will “stay pretty scheduled on that unless we have to move anything.”
The meetings being held every other week resulted from 2020’s Proposition C city charter amendment, which reduced the number of required council meetings in a calendar year. The story of the 1:00 pm meeting time was a little more complicated, however.
Before September 2018, the council’s regular meetings were held at 5:30 pm. Publicly, the meetings were changed from that time after a suggestion by City Manager Jared Miller, who cited wanting to minimize staff overtime. However, while Miller publicly suggested moving the time to 7:00 am, a records request revealed that Nelson was requesting looking at moving the meeting time as early as July 2018 to avoid conflicts with a family member’s sports games.
While there was public backlash to moving the meetings to 7:00 am, that decision was dropped largely because then-Councilman Eddy Sauer had to open his dentist practice at that time. The council then settled on a 1:00 pm regular time, which was initially coupled with a noon public comment meeting. The public comment meetings were eventually dropped, with the public comment reabsorbed into the regular meetings in the form of public address.