The Chesapeake City Council held a work session at 5:00 p.m. to discuss proposed revisions to the City Council Rules of Order and Procedure, followed by a regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. that included several public hearings on rezoning, conditional use permits, and zoning text amendments. All votes were recorded.
We uh have an interesting topic that I think we hopefully get a lot of discussion. Uh Mr. Vice Mayor, I'll turn the floor over to you. Thank you, Mayor West. Um we're gonna approach this time of reviewing the revisions a little different than last time. It's been about two years uh since our last full revision of City Council's rules of order and procedure. If uh members of council could recall, previously I wrote and submitted to council my review and recommendations for revisions, additions, uh, and deletions. Um I'm not going to do that this time. Um I feel in looking back, maybe that was somewhat presumptuous on my part to go ahead and submit a document with my opinion on things, although we did have some very, very good discussion on all of those and did make some revisions and additions, which I think uh have proven to be very helpful. So rather than uh me submitting that review and for for the discussion, um I requested uh uh council members their thoughts and concerns regarding our rules of order and procedure uh uh for each council member from each council member. And I did receive two or three responses. Uh additionally, besides the couple of written responses, I've uh uh also we've had discussions among ourselves uh informally about um some uh thoughts on that. So I think uh this this forum can uh can also include uh those uh thoughts. Uh and I thought the best way to proceed would be to have a um open discussion uh today, uh tonight, uh, and then have each council member uh review some of their questions, some of the concerns that they had or some of the suggestions that they had, and then open it up for some preliminary discussion. And I would suggest that after today's meeting, uh I'll collate all of those comments and all of those uh uh items which council would like to consider for action uh and then um uh distribute those to council members for an additional look at, okay and comment. Because I think uh when we do decide on any changes in that, uh I believe that should come formally to city council as an agenda as a published agenda item uh for uh uh vote uh for discussion uh and then vote. So uh we'll look at that. And perhaps one other work session would be appropriate before we move with a codified uh vote on those. Okay. So with that, uh uh I'd like to start by recognizing uh Don Kerry who submitted a number of of suggestions and uh and um uh just to start wherever you want, Don, with uh whatever you think is most critical, then work them through it and and we'll leave this as an open discussion. Okay. Um thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I guess I'll take each item in turn and then pause for conversation. And if there's none, then I'll move on. I mean, we're not gonna vote to approve or deny this today, so okay. Uh the the first item is a light one, uh limited speaking length and work sessions to 10 minutes at a time. The purpose of this is to bring our conversations and our work session in line with the conversation we have during our regular council meetings. Uh so any comments anyone wants to give on that before I move on to the next. Okay, cool. Uh the second one is I I think a um far more heavier matter, and that is the preparer of all closed session documentation um must submit a cop a copy of the said document to the city clerk to be kept in record for a period of time per state local ordinance. Um the the purpose of this is to have a clear chain of custody of all documents that come to city council in closed session, and I would suggest that um each document as brought into that closed session be given to the most trusted council member, which I believe is the vice mayor, since that is the position that we all vote on to establish, and then that individual would then give that record to the city clerk who would store it as she sees fit. So Mr. Carey, if I could ask the city attorney, are there any comments on that as a procedural uh uh procedural uh process that would be appropriate and allowable? Uh that procedure would be perfectly in keeping with legal requirements, and it would preserve you know records retention requirements right now. Right now, we've been advising city staff who bring documents into closed session to take it with them, and then the staff preserves the records on their own to comply with records retention. I do think that having a focal point, one person who is the keeper of that record would make sense. Okay, I think maybe ask Ms. Madison to We have um discussed this, and I have already created a safe place in Laserfish that is has limited capability, so just anybody couldn't go in laser fish and look at it to store those records as long as they're supposed to be kept. Okay. Good. May I ask a question? Yes. The the language the preparer of all closed session documentation. So this may be a technical, but if we are, for example, in a closed session with someone from economic development, like Mr. Wright, he technically may not be the person who prepared the document. It could be somebody else in his office. So is the should it just be that there's a member? I guess the intent is a member from council takes that document, gives it to Miss Madison. Is that correct?