The premise of this agenda item is to seek direction/consensus from the City Council to consider modifying/altering the city’s current agenda process and procedures. The current process is quite cumbersome and requires multiple hours per item to write, review, and ultimately publish, not to mention if the item requires review for legal sufficiency. The process as it stands today results in items having to be started at least a month prior to the City Council meeting. City administration reviews every agenda item and its attachments as part of the agenda process, which takes two to three days assuming that there are no deficiencies or policy concerns with a particular item. Furthermore, publishing the final agenda packet seven days prior to a City Council meeting leaves little to no time to modify any agenda items in the event that information concerning the topic changes. For the public’s edification, this agenda item includes a draft schedule for the process administratively implemented to ensure that the information is provided in a timely fashion for the administrative review and publishing of the agenda. Additionally, this process does not account for the review of legislative/agenda items proffered by City Council Members.

Pursuant to Resolution Number 26 – 02, regular agenda items must be submitted to the City Manager’s office 13 days prior to the date of the City Council meeting. Additionally, supplemental agenda items by any City Council Member are required to be provided to the City Manager in writing no later than noon on the fourth business day preceding the City Council meeting. In addition, the majority of the City Council must vote in the affirmative before an item is placed on the agenda as an add-on. A non-agenda item shall be introduced only when deemed to require urgent attention by the City Council Chairperson or another City Council Member. A non-agenda item is defined as any item that is not on the printed agenda or on any printed supplemental agenda. A unanimous vote of the City Council shall be required to allow a non-agenda item to be placed on the agenda.

The adoption of a resolution is not required for legislative approval of any action contemplated by the legislative body; the current process utilized by the City of Riviera Beach is not commonplace or common practice by the other government entities. A resolution is basically establishing the City Council’s legislative position on an item. Therefore, staff is recommending that a resolution only be utilized for stating the city’s position on matters of major legislative priority, approval of contracts and agreements but not for routine items that come before the City Council for policy execution. This particular process adds for an abundant amount of staff time and resources and requires the legal staff to work in crafting the appropriate whereas clauses in the resolution to ensure the legislative intent is captured.

Additionally, it is duplicative that the same items in the agenda item are contained in the resolution, this practice leaves multiple opportunities for mistakes concerning whether the information contained in the resolution matches what is included in the agenda item. In order to eliminate confusion, staff is recommending modifying the use of resolutions to approve routine items. To minimize opportunities for confusion, staff is recommending that the use of resolutions be left exclusively to the items articulated in the above paragraph.

The above paragraph merely highlights significant deficiencies in legislative processes that require amendments and modifications. Additionally, multiple government entities surveyed have the agenda process managed by city administration versus our existing procedures. One modification that staff would like to see considered is for the agenda to be posted seven days prior to the regular meeting of the City Council. However, the agenda packet is distributed on the Friday prior to any regularly scheduled meeting. This additional flexibility will provide city staff with additional time to ensure those agenda items are professionally constructed and that they incorporate all of the key elements for assisting policymakers in creating sound public policy with relevant and complete information.

Since the arrival of the City Manager, emphasis has been placed on thorough and complete agenda items. The processes have been modified to incorporate a more robust and comprehensive written product provided by department directors. In doing so, the staff has found that agenda items take profoundly more time and effort to provide the product that meets the expectations of the city administration. By modifying the agenda items, looking to deploy another software tool to modernize the interface, and allowing for more technology to be incorporated into the process, staff is essentially requesting that the City Council consider deviating from the Novus platform and enable staff to move to a more intuitive yet robust product. The existing system has duplicative aspects, where staff is doing double the work to enter an item into Novus and to craft agendas that meet the current standard. For the edification of the public, draft agenda item instructions provided by the administration are attached along with a previously written agenda item.

Additionally, staff would like the City Council to consider allowing citizen comments to occur at the beginning of the meeting. The reason for this is twofold: first, this will allow members of the public an opportunity to participate in their government much sooner than waiting until 7:30 p.m., and second, it will allow the continuity and flow of the meeting for pertinent legislative actions.  As it happens currently, it is very common for the meetings to come to an immediate halt at 7:30 p.m. for public comments. This particular practice disrupts the process of conducting regular city business and completing the City Council meeting.

City staff would also like to review the procedures for decorum to make sure that individuals’ First Amendment rights are preserved but that the comments and remarks made to the City Council and staff are also respectful and reasonable. These comments should not become personal attacks or attempts to disparage individuals’ characters and professional standards. Understanding that this is a very complicated and complex process that will inevitably affect how the meetings flow, the staff is asking for consensus for the City Council to review and proffer recommendations concerning the city policies that govern rules of decorum, public meeting policies, and procedures and agenda processes.

Other pertinent items to consider are that many government entities have deviated from adopting Robert’s Rules of Order as actual policy, as the policies are not followed with regard to how an item is introduced and ultimately voted upon. This could present an opportunity for a legal challenge based on a procedural flaw. Many city administrators have recommended to their policymaking boards to utilize Roberts Rules of Order as a guideline/ best practices but not as an actual policy. Additionally, many government entities have abandoned verbatim minutes and have moved to action-oriented minutes to encapsulate the actions taken by the board versus a long verbatim transcript. Staff reviewed this item in previous years, and going to action-oriented minutes would save the city and the Community Redevelopment Agency (“CRA”) tens of thousands of dollars. The statute requires all government entities to take meeting minutes, but it does not require notes to be taken verbatim. Therefore, it is important to capture the legislative intent and the actions made by the governing body.