Haines Mayor Jan Hill will crack open a parliamentary procedures rule book during next week’s assembly meeting in an effort to make them more efficient.
Hill told the assembly at its Oct. 10 meeting that discussion of ordinances for introduction were limited to five minutes each.
“Many times when we introduce our ordinances we talk about each one for longer than we need to for the introduction part of the ordinance,” Hill said. “Most often five minutes should be plenty of time to decide if an ordinance is good to go forward (for public hearing) or if it needs to be referred to a committee or returned to staff for more work.”
Hill referenced “Robert’s Rules of Order,” a widely used parliamentary procedure manual used across the United States. Borough code requires the assembly to follow the manual.
The rules are implemented “to enable assemblies of any size, with due regard for every member’s opinion, to arrive at the general will on the maximum number of questions of varying complexity in a minimum amount of time and under all kinds of internal climate ranging from total harmony to hardened or impassioned division of opinion,” Robert’s Rules states.
The rules also say no member may speak more than twice to the same motion, or longer than ten minutes at one time.
If an issue warrants further discussion, according to the manual, it should be brought to a committee meeting.
Borough assembly member Tresham Gregg didn’t like Hill’s idea. He said the limitations seemed “punitive and restrictive.”
“I think our meetings are succinct,” Gregg said. “It’s nice for everybody to voice their opinion when they feel like it.”
How succinct are Haines Borough Assembly meetings compared other similarly sized communities? To find out, the CVN calculated average meeting lengths going back six months in Wrangell, Petersburg and Sitka.
Wrangell’s and Petersburg’s assembly meetings averaged 1 hour and 30 minutes. Sitka’s meetings averaged 2 hours and 15 minutes. Haines Borough Assembly meetings averaged 3 hours.