By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The City of Beaufort has voted to change how it schedules and conducts council meetings going forward.
During the June 25 regular City Council meeting, council members voted to approve an ordinance that changes number of times that council meets during the month.
In the ordinance, a monthly work session at 5 p.m. and regular meeting at 7 p.m. are to be held on the second Tuesday of the month.
Previously, meetings were held twice a month on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month.
Additionally, the ordinance allows work sessions or other needed meetings to be held on the second, third and fourth Tuesdays of the month.
These meetings were also previously held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month with a third work session devoted to Beaufort Code changes, but the code work sessions have come to an end, according to a release from the City of Beaufort.
During the June 11 meeting, City Council also adopted a manual of Standard Operating Procedures that changes how the council will conduct its regular meetings.
Going forward, Council agendas will include a consent agenda or routine items that typically come before City Council, such as approvals of special events held at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park.
Other non-controversial and routine items may also be included on the consent agenda.
The items on the consent agenda can be approved all together, although members of City Council reserve the right to remove items from the consent agenda in order to discuss them before approval.
The way in which public comment is handled during regular City Council meetings will change as well.
There will now be two different public comment periods, one near the beginning of the meeting and one near the end.
The first comment period will be limited to comments on meeting agenda items only, while the second period will give members of the community the opportunity to comment on any matter related to City business.
In the past, public comment for unrelated agenda topics was allowed at the beginning and then community members were given the opportunity to comment as each of the agenda items was discussed by Council during the meeting.
Under the new procedures, speakers will be limited to five minutes per speaker and comments can be made in person or via Zoom.
Speakers are asked to sign a Public Comment Sign-In Sheet at least 15 minutes before the meeting, which will be set up on a table at the entrance to Council Chambers or let the City Clerk know of their intentions to speak prior to the meeting.
City Councilman Neil Lipsitz said that he thinks that these changes will be nothing but positive for the meetings going forward, especially as it will require community members to focus their comments to fall within the time frame.
Agreeing with his fellow councilman, Josh Scallate said he thinks that this will be positive because it will allow council members to put focus in needed places.
“I feel confident that this will not hinder our productivity and may even allow for members of council to focus more on work sessions, where community input in collected to ensure proper alignment with decisions that will be made in our regular sessions,” Scallate said.
During the June 25 meeting, council voted to approve a revised calendar of City Council meetings for the remainder of 2024.
The next City Council work session and regular meeting will be held on July 9 before council will take a brief summer break.
The new ordinance and Standard Operating Procedures went into effect on July 1, which was the start of the new fiscal year.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
