Starting March 1, the Sammamish City Council will begin a six-month trial of holding four meetings per month, with two being regular meetings and two being study sessions.
All four meetings will take place during the first three weeks of each month. The first study session will be held on the first Monday on the calendar from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Regular meetings will take place on the first and third Tuesdays, and the second study session will be on the second Tuesday of the month. All Tuesday meetings will be scheduled from 6:30 p.m. until 10 p.m.
The trial period of four monthly council meetings will run through September, when the council expects to evaluate the new format.
The monthly schedule isn’t the only change the council has in the works.
City Manager Lyman Howard presented a report to council members on Feb. 13 from the newly-formed Public Comment ad hoc committee, which consists of Howard and Councilmembers Kathy Huckabay and Tom Hornish.
The committee, which is tasked to come up with policy and procedure recommendations for regulating public comment at council meetings, came up with three options for the council to consider.
Option 1, which the committee recommended, would allow for 30 minutes of public comment at council meetings. The meeting’s presiding officer, the mayor or deputy mayor, would have the option of extending the comment period an additional 30 minutes if necessary. If more comment time would be needed, it would be moved to the end of the meeting with a 10 p.m. limit.
Speakers would continue to be allowed three minutes speaking time per person and five minutes per recognized community group, though only three speakers would be allowed per side of a particular issue, with the intention being to encourage more collaborative public comments.
The option also calls for comment topics to be grouped by category and would remove the council rule of allowing a speaker a second opportunity to comment on another topic.
Option 2 would continue to allow public comment to take place until all comments have been heard, though it would also encourage collaborative comments and would encourage the presiding officer of the meeting to proactively manage comments. This option would also remove the rule allowing speakers a second opportunity for comment.
Option 3 was similar to option 1 with the added condition that it would have public comment begin at 8 p.m. at council meetings, allowing the community collaboration time before the beginning of the comment period.
During council discussion, Councilmember Christie Malchow said she was against limiting three speakers per topic during public comment and referred to the broad community feedback the council received on the East Lake Sammamish Trail as an example supporting her stance. Malchow added she was intrigued by a later start time for public comment.
Councilmember Ramiro Valderrama also expressed concerns with limiting three speakers per topic during public comment and said he liked the idea of starting public comment later.
Councilmember Tom Odell suggested the council have a sign-up sheet for public comment that includes what topics people will be speaking about.
Mayor Don Gerend said he believed he heard a general consensus among the council for moving forward with the recommended first option, noting council members’ concerns with the three-speaker limit and adding he didn’t like the idea of grouping topics. As the discussion took place at a study session, no council action was taken. Gerend said a motion might be made at the council’s next meeting.
The council also discussed potentially eliminating public comment from study sessions altogether. Deputy Mayor Bob Keller suggested the council simply eliminate public comment from the newly-added monthly Monday meeting, which the council appeared to show consensus for later adopting.
