By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council laid out the framework for its Thursday at 6:30 p.m. study session on the Woodie Seat Freeway as part of its regular Tuesday meeting.
"I anticipate that being at least several hours," City Manager Jeff Cantrell said. "We did a dry run yesterday with staff on the presentation. It's going to be a lot of information to take in."
The council seemed to reach a consensus that they would allow the public to speak at Thursday's meeting, but in a particular order.
"If we want to make study sessions open to public comment, we should probably reserve that for the end of the meeting after the presentation by staff and council discussion," said Mayor Jade Piros de Carvalho.
The idea behind that is because the staff and council discussion is information the public would need so that they know where everyone is coming from and if any concerns they have are already being addressed.
"I would suggest that we have a sign in sheet," said councilman Steve Garza. "A lot of people say that they were never notified. I don't know. To me, you need to have them, if they want to, sign in and that way we have proof that we had a meeting and we had 20 people attend the meeting. That way we can say that we did have input."
Even if the council figures out an initial direction on Thursday, there won't be any final voting on it until a regular meeting, plus it appeared that the council wants to be sure that the neighborhood is well informed, even if they can't make the study session on Thursday.
There may be an appetite for an additional neighborhood meeting, depending on the results of the meeting on Thursday. Because of the desire for public input, the study session will be held in the regular City Council meeting room Thursday night at 6:30 p.m.