Today we are taking a deeper dive into how to read a city council agenda. We’ll be walking you through how to find, read, and interpret a City Council meeting agenda to help you, Ann Arbor, follow along and get more involved.
Transcript
JL: Hi and welcome to this episode of Ann Arbor. If a podcast for folks trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann Arbor we discuss current events in local politics and policy governance and other civic good times. I’m just Lita, and my pronouns are she, her I’m Michele Hughes.
MH: Also, she her
MK: And I’m Molly Kleinman. And my pronouns are also she her
JL: We’re your co host to help you get informed and get involved, today we’re taking a deeper dive into how to read a City Council agenda.
Will be walking you through how to find read and interpret a city council meeting agenda to help you and arbor follow along and get more involved.
Let’s jump in. So I’m going to take the lead on this because I think I was the first one to say I really wanted to do this episode because when I first started following along with local politics.
I could not figure out how to read an agenda. And in fact, it probably took me a little bit longer to get involved, then it could have because I really struggled to read this one document.
And I think part of what I wanted to do is make the resource that I wish that I’d had at the time. So, in the interest of kind of
Making everybody else’s learning curves, a little bit shallower. I was hoping that we could have a conversation about this seemingly intractable document and actually making sense of what’s in there.
MK: That sounds great. And as we’ve been talking about it. I’ve, I’ve learned a lot that I didn’t, I didn’t already know. I think of the three of us. I’m the newest to paying such close attention to city council meetings.
And it’s, there’s been a lot to learn. So we’re going to start with some really basic basics, which is how often and when city council meetings are
So city council meetings in Ann Arbor are the first and third Mondays of every month.
Except when they’re not things like national holidays. It got moved around for Thanksgiving. But usually first and third Mondays. If there’s a fifth Monday in the month we get an extra week of no council meetings, they’re always at 7pm Eastern Time.
And the agenda is because we’re focusing here, not on the meetings, but just on the agendas. The, the final agenda is usually posted by the Friday before that Monday meeting.
Sometimes there’s a draft that’s up as early as the Wednesday before, but there are also sometimes last minute items that get added. So even though there’s a supposedly final agenda on Friday.
Council members might add agenda items later than that. And often the late ads are the are the spicy ones. And so one thing that I just wanted to ask, Michelle I see on social media.
You’ll often start highlighting. Ooh. These are going to be some upcoming agenda items. This week, and I’m like, I didn’t even know there was a council meeting this week. And I’m just wondering like how is there a way that you keep track of.
When the meetings are going to be, do you just kind of
disturbance in the force.
MH: I feel the rhythm in my soul.
And I go, oh, this is this is this is
This is a council week I should probably I should probably check for an agenda starting on Wednesday and
Like
MK: And there’s no, like, you can’t subscribe in any way to sort of get get the agenda emailed to you from
MH: You might be able to like, subscribe to an RSS feed or something weird
MK: You do.
JL: But I know I’ve subscribed to a number of different types of information from the city and I do get those on a reliable basis. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen the Council agenda be part of that information.
I’m in ward five and one of my council members is Erica Briggs and she typically send out a link to the upcoming meeting, but I wouldn’t consider that coming from the city. Okay.
MH: I do
On
MH: On register which we’ll talk about in a second. There’s, there’s a few buttons at the top of the page with the calendar on it.
And
It says things like, is there’s an RSS thing. And then there’s a bell. You can click for alerts. I’ve never clicked it before but
MK: You just kind of
Feel it. And, you know, but
It’s possible that someone might be able to sign up and I should probably do that so I can be
paying closer attention.
MH: And it’s, you know, it’s usually like there’s a there’s an on week and there’s an off week and there’s non we can. There’s an off week. And so it’s, you know, I just feel that rhythm.
I get disturbed when you know there’s a disturbance in the forest whenever it’s a five week you know five Monday month or something like that.
MK: Right. Okay. Um, that was helpful. So in terms of where you can find the meeting agenda the meeting agenda lives.
In legislator, which is a piece of. It’s a whole platform that the city licenses. So, the city has very little control over a lot of the aspects of of where these things live
You can find them at a to gov dot ledger star.com and that is where not just the city council.
Agendas live, but lots and lots and lots of city documents are in there. But that’s when you go to that site, it will default to taking you straight to the city council agendas.
There’s a lot that’s really frustrating about legislation, we could do many tutorials just about how to use it. But the landing pages actually not too terrible
When you get there. There’s a list of all of the city council meetings for the month that you’re in. And if there are agendas for any of them. Those agendas are there and you can download them and take a look at them.
MH: And there’s a thing there. That’s like if you’re interested in a different committee like Planning Committee or the independent community police oversight Commission like you can
You can click on the thing that’s like, oh, do you want just city council do you want and then there’s a list of all the other
boards and commissions and things like that.
Another thing, if you go from the city’s website you can go to a to gov.org and then click on democracy and then click on meetings and agendas. That’s usually the way I go in, it doesn’t filter to just city council, um,
But yeah
MK: So that’s how we get to it. So I think, Michelle, you were going to talk a little bit about the the various places in the in the agenda where we can find public engagement.
MH: That’s right. There’s a lot of stuff in the agenda. And so, yeah, I think it’s important to know like where where you fit in.
And basically, people have three opportunities to talk
One of them is something you have to sign up for in advance. So if you want to plan ahead. That’s the one to plan ahead for the other two are
You don’t have to sign up in advance. But there are some downsides, so I’m
At the nearly the beginning of the meeting. There’s a thing called public comment. General time know that it’s called public comment reserve time and
That’s the thing where if you call the city clerk on the day of the meeting and ask for a time to speak, then you might get one of the 10 speaking slots.
During what you can talk for three minutes and
priority is given to certain people so like if you’re talking about something that’s actually on the agenda, then you’ll get priority over somebody who’s not talking about something that’s on the agenda.
If you want to talk about something that’s general just not on the agenda, then you can only end up talking about that if no one else has signed up if you know if the 10 slots are full.
So that’s something you got to be prepared for know what you doing
Some items on the agenda have public hearings and that’s where there’s a specific item that you get to talk about and any number of people could be more than 10 filibuster them and spend hours and hours and hours if you can plan enough people to come in there.
And but you each only get three minutes to talk and only about the specific topic of the public hearing and it’s usually
Things where they’re changing a certain type of the changing of the law in a certain type of way that requires a public hearing
If they’re doing if they’re making a Council resolution, which doesn’t have the binding force of law that doesn’t require a public hearing
And then so yeah that’s the public hearing section.
And those usually come pretty close to the beginning of the meeting and all the public hearings are kind of bunched in together and
You don’t necessarily like the council members aren’t going to respond to you. They’re not necessarily going to directly address the things that you said they’re just going to say thank you, is the next person.
And then finally at the end is
At the if you can, if you can wait it out all the way till the end of the meeting, which sometimes
Sometimes, that’ll be a long wait. I’ve seen meetings go till two or three in the morning.
Best case scenario, yet they ended 11pm
Then you’ll get a chance to
Do public comment. General time where it’s any number of people can speak three minutes. You don’t have to sign up in advance. You don’t have to talk about anything in particular.
But if you want to like influence a decision that’s going to happen at the meeting. You can’t do that because the decisions have already been made by the pending at the end of the meeting.
One more thing I wanted to add was that
Public Comment reserve time, the one that’s at the beginning where you have to sign up in advance your name will be on the agenda.
And anyone can, like, look at that and see who is it’ll get up there on the day of the meeting later in the evening, and you can see who was on the list. You can see where you are on the list. You can see who else is talking
So,
It’s fun. So those are the like three main opportunities for the public to speak.
JL: And I appreciate you reminding us that your name shows up on the agenda. I think the first time that I signed up for public comment. I was shocked to see my name.
MH: Yeah.
JL: It wasn’t a problem, but it did take me back.
MH: So it is nice to know at a time.
If you’re looking on legislator, it’s not the default, the default view doesn’t show people’s name, you have to like there’s a thing that says Show.
Legislation and you have to sing change that to show all items and then that’s how you can see who signed up. Yep. Um,
But yeah, so I talked about three particularly things. But there’s more. There’s more to the meeting them that you want to give us a full a more full outline of what goes on.
JL: Yeah, so I’ll keep kind of we’re continuing to I feel like I zoom in on what
Council meeting is we’ve talked about it in really broad strokes, you’ve talked about how people can plug into a meeting, you know, I care about something. How do I get engaged. I’ll talk a little bit about the general
tempo of a tempo and rhythm of a meeting. So in general, it starts with a very administrative non interactive bitch.
There’s a moment of silence. There’s the roll call. There’s the, I think they do the Pledge of Allegiance.
And some clerical work. And then as you mentioned, the public comment reserve time then there’s another non interactive part for mayor and council communications.
Where folks aren’t necessarily working on ordinance or resolutions, but they have something that they’d like to state for the record to their constituency to their constituents.
And sometimes more rarely, but sometimes they may make a general response to
Public comments that folks have made that is not a forum for dialogue so they’re careful about, you know, kind of really turning that into a full on conversation, but they may do
A little bit more than acknowledge the comment and then they really get into the work of the work. Right. So the ordinances, the resolutions, the staff work.
That is really kind of that grinding machine that is city council, that’s really when they get back down to it.
And then they close with some more non interactive time which is administrative communications from the city attorney and the city clerk.
And then the cherry on top of all of that is the public comment. General time. And as you said, you know, a meeting can last as short as four hours, but as long as seven or eight
Which is hard on everybody. And I think that Council is motivated to find ways to make these meetings, more and more inclusive and part of that means making them shorter without coming at the expense of the work.
But that’s generally how it moves. It’s kind of an Evan flow between interactive points between the public and the working body.
And and the work that the body must conduct. So that’s a gem of a more specific, but still somewhat general overview of how a city council meeting and agenda works. And now we’re really going to hand it over to the PhD of civic engagement and the show.
Real
MH: Goodness. I did get I didn’t get like a little metal one time for going to
What do you call it the
Citizens Academy
JL: I believe it.
MH: gave everyone a little metal and certificate at the end.
It’s a
JL: Very
Thirsty in this document.
MH: Yeah. Um, so, okay, actually. So, okay.
You’re there, you’re ready to ready to like see what’s going to happen at the at the city council meeting your, you know, it’s Wednesday of city council week and you’re starting to be like, Okay, what, what do I need to worry about what do I need to start mobilizing and engaging right friends.
What do I need to think about if I want to sign up to talk about
And
Here’s the document you’re reading
So one thing that I actually wanted to call out specifically is something that doesn’t happen at the meeting. It’s they call it the agenda questions.
And it’ll appear at the very top of the agenda as communication from the city administrator and that’s where city council members have asked questions and then staff answers them and
That appears later in the week. So if you’re starting on Wednesday, looking at the agenda, you’re not going to see that. I think that usually appears that by Friday, though.
And reading the agenda questions is a good way to
Get a feel good to get a sense of, like, what’s on the council members minds.
And
You know, if you see a whole bunch of questions about stuff, then maybe you know if you know the answers. Maybe you want to address those in your public comment that sort of thing.
But, uh, yeah. And so then. Okay, so that’s the agenda questions.
After that comes the introductions, which is like
A non interactive thing. It comes from
Either staff or people in the community, like we might get, like, oh, here’s what’s here’s the proposed new transportation plan or something like that, they’ll, they’ll talk about that a staff member
Or
When the
The Independent police oversight Commission they addressed the city council at the first meeting of every month in the introduction section. And also, like if there’s like, you know, oh it’s Cancer Awareness Week or whatever, then that’ll happen there.
And that is all stuff that happens before public comment. And this public comment.
And the communications that we’ve heard
So the consent agenda is the thing that happens after public comment. And after
After the communications from Council, the consent agenda is something that is supposed to it’s it’s long.
And it’s nitty gritty and it’s very detailed and it’s usually uncontroversial. It’s things like we want to award that contract for the asphalt paving to this company. And it’s usually like decisions that have, you know,
Like that are kind of a procedural nature and not have a policy type nature. We need a sign off on this, but we’ve basically already agreed to do this stuff. This is just making it happen and kind of things.
That happens in the consent agenda. Although sometimes
City Council members do take umbrage to something in the consent agenda or they’re real excited about it. And so they’ll say they’ll, they’ll pull it out of the consent agenda because everything that’s in the consent agenda is voted on at once with no discussion and so
You know, if, if everything is as everyone expected, then the consent agenda, just, it’s like, does anyone have any problems with the consent agenda. No. Okay, let’s go.
But if somebody wants to discuss one of those in more detail or ask questions or has
Problems with some of it a council member can say, actually let’s number seven, let’s let’s pull that out and discuss it separately. And so then they’ll approve the rest of the consent agenda and then talk about the ones that they pulled out.
It’s meant to go fast, but it doesn’t always and so it’s kind of funny that like it comes in between.
Like public comment reserve time at the beginning and the
And the public hearings, which come after it because
You think that
All of the public, you know, the public comment times would be squished together. But that’s not how it goes. The public hearings are there.
When there’s something
That is when there’s a change that’s going to be made that has the force of law.
The public gets a chance to weigh in on it.
And
They will have a public hearing
At those everyone gets a chance to speak, who wants it, and you don’t have to sign up in advance and it’s three minutes.
So then after that are
The different like
Business of Council.
Doing the work city council doing the work.
So there’s a section about
city ordinances a first and a second reading the second readings one come first.
Because those are things that have been to the City Council already
They’ve been discussed by the city council, the City Council has approved it to move on to the to a second hearing
And
These are an ordinance is the thing that has the force of law.
And so at the first hearing at the first reading of an ordinance, people don’t get a chance to speak about it.
Only the city council does. And then if they approve it to go on to the second second reading, then you get a public hearing, then they’ll vote on it in the second reading section then they’ll consider new ordinances and the first reading section.
And then it’s on to the motions and resolutions section. This is where, and this is where the city council like sets policy, but not stuff that has the force of law.
It sometimes feels like it does have the force of law because they’re directing the staff to do certain things or take certain actions or they’re saying, hey, we’re gonna adopt the policy of carbon neutrality by 2030
But that’s not the like law on the books. No one’s going to get arrested for not having carbon neutrality by 2030
And so that’s emotional resolutions.
JL: And I just want to pop in and say, real quick, you know, folks.
You, you may be hearing, you know, people talk about a to counsel or meetings or getting kind of head up about a particular piece of work.
Even though there’s, you know, the 17 different sections of the agenda that we’re talking about 100% of the time the work that they care about is in the motions and resolution section.
Unless it’s in the consent agenda, in which case it often gets pulled out. So if you’re looking for a piece of work that folks are talking about, I would suggest just starting with Section D motions and resolutions and kind of working your way out from there.
MH: Yeah, I think by the time something gets to the point where you’re setting, you know, an ordinance that has the force of law, like a lot of work has gone
behind that. And so, yeah, like the motions and resolutions. That’s where they’re like setting the vision, setting the goal setting my like the direction that the city is taking. And so that’s where a lot of debate happens so that can get kind of spicy.
And
Yeah, those are those are the main sections that I pay attention to.
So the things like you know approval of the city council minutes that’s that’s a line item on the agenda, but it’s something that has never controversial and takes the real time when you don’t even notice that it’s happening.
There is like
Sections like of minutes from
You know, and communications from boards and commissions and stuff like that. But they don’t actually read those at the at the city council meeting. They’re not really a part of the meeting. They’re just
In there as part of the document. Now, but sometimes those are the most up to date ways to find out what has been going on.
On the boards and commissions who do some of the work before things make it all the way that the city council. So he might keep an eye on that. But that’s not the thing anyone’s gonna be yelling about
Anyway, that’s the
That’s the like skeleton of the meeting. That’s, that’s how things go.
JL: You know, it sounds so straightforward and I just remember confused. I was getting
With the time
MH: I mean there’s stuff that like, you know, we were discussing this before the meeting and I was even confused about stuff. Just before we started recording and I was like, What’s this again.
JL: At least one thing today just getting ready for this conversation.
A
JL: Listener if you find yourself confused by the city council meeting agenda, you’re not alone, and you’re in great company.
Okay. So Michelle did a fantastic job really going into the details of the City Council agenda. I just wanted to touch briefly on the anatomy of a line item.
Because again, in preparing for this conversation. I learned some things. And so I wanted to share it.
So you’ll see there are two different ways to look at a City Council agenda. Well, I guess, three if
You know you’re super analog and you print it out, but like, assuming that you’re on your computer or you know digitally accessing the agenda and in one way or another. You can either look at the PDF or you can look at the agenda within legislator itself.
MK: will renew that
JL: Molly’s learning line.
MK: I always have. I always look at the PDF. I did on other
JL: The PDF is wonderful because it’s English and it’s the easiest one to read if you read it within legislature legislature.
And you click into an individual line items number. So the, the number the, excuse me, the letters that is preceded by whether it’s DC DB ca whatever it is that refers to the section that it falls under
In the meeting. And then the number is, I don’t know. The Great Pumpkin assign so summers, but anyway.
You can click into the number and then there are two different pieces of information that you can get from that you can get the history
Of that particular piece of work and you can get the text and because this is the Spanish Inquisition. When I said to I meant three. There are also the attachments
For that particular line item. So there’s a fair amount that you can learn about any given piece of work within legislator before a meeting.
Malia talk a moment about how to find out more through more human means. But if what you’re doing is starting with the computer and trying not to talk to the humans, then there is a fair amount that you can call from legit star.
Michelle. Did I miss anything on that before we pass on to the next bit I guess maybe you were the one that actually taught me about the tabs.
MH: Yeah, there’s because you have a history tab shows like
If it was postponed reconsidered at a different at a previous meeting, it’ll show the voting history.
You click on the text and I’ll show you.
The resolution you sometimes have to click, click here for full text.
But yeah, then if there’s something like if it’s a rezoning thing, then it’ll have maps that sort of thing. Those are the really what the attachments are
Oh, and by the way, speaking of rezoning I wanted to go back to
You said it 100% of the time the things people are mad about our motions and resolutions, but zoning is actually something that goes under ordinances first and second reading, and that’s something that people are often upset about.
JL: You’re absolutely right and and in future episodes. When we talk more about like how to engage work at different processes. I definitely want to unpack that more. So thank you for pointing out that I was wrong about that because you are so 100% right
Um, okay. So the last thing that I wanted to say about an anatomy of the anatomy of a line item is there is a fair amount of information that’s available on particular work items. It’s also presented
Really without a lot of helpful context. So it can be hard to tell, chronologically what’s happened, it can be hard to tell who’s contributed. What kind of work, like when it comes to a development.
Ones come what’s come from the city what’s come from the developer what’s come from community engagement, it can be hard to really kind of assess that which is where talking to the humans actually comes in handy. So, Molly. Can you tell us a little bit about that.
MK: Yeah, so really just if there’s something that’s confusing to you or that you’re concerned about you can reach out to your city clerk or your council members or the mayor their phone numbers and email addresses are all on the city’s website.
MH: And he’s got that org
MK: A to gov.org which is another thing that I still haven’t fully gotten into my fingers.
And you can call the City Clerk’s Office directly. That’s this is also the number that you would be calling to get to get signed up for the public comment reserve time I’m going to give it to you real quick. It’s 734-794-6140
And it’s in our very is a city, but it’s also a small town and
People are pretty responsive and you can actually hear back from folks at the city hear back from your city council member hear back even from the mayor. And that’s often a way to to get questions answered. And also, just to learn
To learn more about how how these things are working or if there’s something that’s a persistent problem. You can also find folks on social media. The there’s a Twitter hashtag.
Which is a to council and a lot of discussion of these of the Council meetings and different agenda items often get started there and that’s so that’s another place you can go
To find stuff out.
MH: We usually live tweet during the city council meetings and then that will result in
A to Council being a trending hashtag for the state of Michigan.
MK: And that’s, I mean that’s pretty much it. I think in terms of reaching out to folks did you have other does
Anyone have anything else they want to add
MH: I wanted to add sometimes. One thing I always tell people about if getting on getting on the public comment reserve time be CALL THE CITY CLERK city. Click opens at 8am call them at 8am.
If there’s if there’s a controversial agenda item sometimes all 10 of those speaking slots will be gone by 802 yeah call them call them as soon as possible.
JL: Yeah, that’s a good point. And you can’t call ahead of time so you can’t, right. It’s like you can’t call shotgun BEFORE YOU SEE THE CAR. YOU CAN’T LIKE, GET ON THE PUBLIC COMMENT reserved like the Friday before. Yeah. So yeah.
MH: Give them a call 734-794-6140 tell them you want to get on the speaking agenda. Tell them what you want to speak about
Another thing is I was talking about calling in to speak about things. And that’s because we’re living in pandemic times, but during the not so pandemic times which will hopefully. Hopefully occur at some point in the future as well as the past
The city council meetings happened in person and there wasn’t a way to call in, so he had to actually go down to City Hall in order to speak at City Council.
That keep an eye out. If that happens again.
JL: And that, in a nutshell, is how to read a City Council agenda, we hope that you learned something we did just getting ready for this conversation.
And we really thank you for listening to Ann Arbor area. Thank you to my co host Molly Kleinman and Michelle Hughes and myself. Jesse, Tom.
And took our producer Jared Palestine for questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes. You can email us at Ann Arbor AF pod at GMAIL. COM get informed thing get involved. It’s your city.
MH: And we’re out