Council's maddening meeting deliberations

Plainfield's City Council reminded us once again Monday evening why these bodies are called 'deliberative assemblies'.

Because they deliberate, that's why.

And sometimes without coming to any satisfactory conclusion.

Take, for instance, a meeting schedule for calendar year 2008.

Bear in mind that the Councilors have had since spring of 2006 to decide whether they like their new Monday-Wednesday schedule -- which upset 80 years or more of Monday-only meetings (I tripped across a 1925 newspaper article that cited Monday meetings) -- or want to go back to the traditional schedule, or try something else.

Listening to the conversation around the Council table, it seemed not much thought had gone on in the nearly two years of the 'new' schedule.

Only Councilor Storch remembered and called to his fellow members' attention that the ORIGINAL
intent of the meeting-day changes was to REDUCE the number of meetings in a calendar year.

No one seemed to be prepared to jump on that bandwagon, however, for reasons that are not clear.

I made a somewhat facetious suggestion last January (see story here), when the Council was trying to decide what to do about the 2007 schedule, that they could just go to ONE AGENDA-SETTING AND ONE BUSINESS MEETING PER MONTH, which the City Charter allows.

Maybe I should suggest again -- this time in all seriousness -- that the Council consider an ALL-MONDAY, TWO MEETINGS PER MONTH schedule.

Then, if there is more business to conduct, they can just call a SPECIAL MEETING like they did last night to deal with the budget and the police contract salary ordinances.

Unless, of course, that would be too simple.

And cause deliberation to cease.

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Plainfield Today: "Breaking news from the City Charter"

-- Dan Damon

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