Council Rushes to Change Meeting Date Per Everyone’s Expectation

• Surprises May Be in Store If Members Think Municipal Flacks Will Dominate the Headlines

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Malibu City Council is poised to discuss the changing of the date of the regular city council sessions at a meeting next week, but the behind the scenes scuttlebutt is that it is a fait accompli—the Brown Act notwithstanding.
At its last meeting, the council directed the staff to bring back the matter on a future agenda. The proposed change was immediately put forward to the next agenda and the staff prepared an ordinance amendment changing the date of council meetings from the second and fourth Monday of each month to the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. The action, if approved, would take effect for the council’s November meeting.
The change is problematic for the local newspapers, given that they go to press on Tuesday night in keeping with local tradition and the local business cycle and that could impact the level of news coverage.
Some council observers think part of the reason for the wanting the date change is that the council’s own press releases—which are often picked up verbatim by the cash and staff-strapped larger media—could preempt more incisive and in-depth local coverage by reporters who work and live locally.
The notion that the city wants PR and not news comes as no surprise to scholars of local government who described it as “the nature of the beast.”
When Councilmember Sharon Barovsky called for the council to consider the change, she said she did not think it would pose a problem since the planning commission changed its meeting day to Tuesday in order to accommodate panelist Joan House, a former council member, when she was tapped to take a seat on the commission.
The commission is considered a springboard for higher office. Former Planning Commissioners Andy Stern, Harry Barovsky, Ken Kearsley, Joan House, Tom Hasse and John Harlow all used the seat to get elected to higher office.
Still, the staff report offers a new explanation that may have been refined in light of concerns already expressed about the date change. It indicates that, during this year, the council meeting day has been moved from Monday to Tuesday twice—first due to the Memorial Day holiday and then in September in observance of Yom Kippur. “Changing the permanent regular meeting date to Tuesdays would circumvent these future scheduling conflicts,” a staff report states. disregarding the fact that Jewish holidays change days from year to year.
The report goes on to say that modifying the regular meeting schedule would also allow the staff an additional business day to prepare for council meetings because Tuesday through Friday are not working—even though they are not broken up by the weekend as would be Wednesday through Monday.
“It also provides the public additional time to contact staff and or city council members to discuss agenda items. Significant amounts of correspondence are often submitted for various agenda items. The modified schedule would allow staff time to evaluate and respond to such correspondence and would provide the city council with additional time for review. Due to reduced staffing on Fridays, conducting city council meetings on Tuesdays rather than Mondays would assist in balancing the work load,” the staff report concludes.
The city council meetings right after incorporation were held on Tuesdays, but the local press urged the Monday change in the interest of timely news coverage and better informed public participation.