Doing Things Differently

Monday night, the City Council undertook the first of what will presumably become a monthly event – a meeting focused entirely on planning issues. According to the protocol changes we made last spring – at the same time we switched the meeting time to 6 p.m. – we will now devote the second meeting of every month just to planning and community development.

After kind of whining in last week’s blog about how long our council meetings are, I have to admit that I was mostly to blame for the length of Monday’s meeting. Everything that the staff put forth was on the consent calendar, and we were done with that by 6:45. But Councilmember Summers and I had put forth two policy considerations. (Details below.) The first, dealing with a possible view task force, took 2 hours and 15 minutes, coming up till 9 o’clock. The second, dealing with building heights in duplex zones in Midtown, took about 45 minutes before it was tabled due to my conflict.

We’ll keep working on all this!