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City Council meetings to take on new meeting format, create topic-based task forces

<p>The newly elected Auburn City Council meets for the first time on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018 in Auburn, Ala.&nbsp;</p>

The newly elected Auburn City Council meets for the first time on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018 in Auburn, Ala. 

Auburn residents can expect more than just new Council members now that the newly elected City Council has been sworn in. 

Auburn City Council meetings beginning with Tuesday’s meetings will follow a new format. Mayor Ron Anders introduced this new format, which includes two different opportunities for citizens to address the Council and a consent agenda. 

“I believe, and the Council believes, that it is worth it for us to see if there is a more efficient way of conducting our business, and there is a more inviting way for people to participate in the process,” Anders said. 

Residents will have their first opportunity at the usual time during citizen’s communications at the beginning of the meeting between Auburn University Communications and City Manager’s Communications. 

Citizens that choose to speak will have five minutes to address the Council on any topic related to the agenda before the Council at that meeting. This topic restriction to citizen’s comments is part of the new format. 

The other opportunity will come at the end of the Council’s meeting. Citizen’s will have three minutes to address the Council on anything that was on the agenda at that night’s meeting or other topics they deem appropriate, City Manager Jim Buston said. 

“We’re going to have a couple of opportunities for people to speak to the Council,” Anders said.

The Council will also now vote on a consent agenda during each meeting. The consent agenda will consist of items the Council must vote on that have historically had little to no discussion, Buston said. 

This means that the Council will vote once to approve historically non-controversial items such as previous meeting minutes, alcoholic beverage license requests, board appointments, contracts and agreements and right-of-way and easement dedications. 

The Council will just vote to approve these items with little to no discussion. Any Council member may request for an item be removed from the consent agenda so it can be dealt with individually during the order they were presented in the consent agenda, Buston said. 

Buston will be the one to determine what items will be on the consent agenda at each meeting. He said those items that councilmembers remove from the consent agenda will be discussed in the order they were presented on the consent agenda. 

Another part of Anders‘ new plan for the City Council are four task forces — each focused on an issue pertinent to the Auburn Community, Anders said. 

The boards and commissions task force, which Ward 2 Councilmember Kelley Griswold and Ward 3 Councilmember and Mayor Pro Tem Beth Witten will lead, will focus on the process of appointing citizens to Auburn’s various boards and commissions.

The Council will soon be working to replace Tracie West, who currently serves on Auburn’s School Board and was recently elected to the Alabama Board of Education. Anders is looking for this task force to implement their new selection process for this upcoming selection, Anders said. 

“I believe there are a couple boards and commissions that demand greater scrutiny of their members,” Anders said. “I’ve asked a couple of our councilmembers, including our mayor pro-tem, to really dig in on this and help us develop a mechanism that if we wanted to take a group of citizens and interview them in a public fashion to determine who we would nominate to serve on these important boards, that we come up with a way of doing that.”

The diversity and inclusion task force will focus on listening to people from across the community. During his mayoral campaign, Anders said he noticed several undervalued sections of Auburn that he would like to bring a new light to.

Ward 1 Council Member Connie Fitch Taylor and Ward 6 Council Member Steven Dixon will lead the diversity and inclusion task force. 

“I believe it is time for us to listen to those who have potentially never been considered before,” Anders said. “So we’re going to do that. I’m looking forward to those meetings and those listening sessions.”

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Ward 8 Council Member Tommy Dawson and Ward 7 Council Member Jay Hovey will lead a student housing task force. This task force will focus on ensuring there is enough student housing to accommodate Auburn’s growing student population while also making sure older student housing properties do not become forgotten and worn down, Anders said. 

“I am very concerned that we are saturating the market, that we are building more student housing than we need,” Anders said. “That we’re going to have old housing that is unused by students anymore. How do we account for that in providing services to our city.”

The short-term rental task force will include Ward 4 Council Member Brett Smith and Ward 6 Council Member Bob Parsons. They will help determine if short term rentals, such as Airbnb, should be allowed in Auburn and what rules should be instated for those rentals, Anders said. 

“We’ve basically heard from the people that are threatened by this and do not want short-term rentals and we need to hear from the other side,” Anders said. “I believe there are people in this town who do like short-term rentals and do believe it is not a bad result for the people in their community.”

Since each task force is made up of two members of the Council this constitutes a quorum, which means a public meeting is required whenever they meet, Buston said.

“They will meet as needed to accomplish their tasks,” Buston said. “All meetings will be advertised through all of our media outlets at least 24 hours in advance.”


Elizabeth Hurley | Community Editor

Elizabeth, senior in journalism and political science, is the community editor for The Plainsman

@lizhurley37

community@theplainsman.com


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