By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The newly seated Hutchinson City Council appeared to want to move a little faster than the council in previous years and to do that by meeting more often. The original idea proposed by Sara Bagwell was off-week study sessions, but city manager Jeff Cantrell had another idea.
"What a lot of cities do in this situation, there's nothing statutory that says you have to meet at a certain time," Cantrell said. "There are some rules as to how you conduct those meetings. A lot of cities have good success with adding those either to the front or the back side of the already established meeting schedule. A lot of cities do it that way, merely because of convenience for staff, but also the elected officials. I know that probably varies across the group."
Steve Garza and Bagwell were interested in an evening time, Jon Richardson seemed to look toward prior to the regular meeting in his limited comments. Greg Fast and Jade Piros de Carvalho expressed support, but didn't publicly say a preference as far as time.
The key, according to Bagwell's comments, is to get each council member to use their skills to the fullest.
"We all have unique skillsets," Bagwell said. "If we're able to communicate with each other and utilize the different skillsets between each of us, I think we can start accomplishing things at a little faster pace."
Bagwell noted her accounting accumen, Richardson's planning experience and Garza's public relations bent as just some of the areas where individuals could work on projects that would be able to be presented to the council at these study sessions, with the goal of streamlining the process. Cantrell did caution the body that they want to make sure the public can stay informed even as they do this work.
"This does make for some efficiency," Cantrell said. "It can also be perplexing to the public when they see a super complex item come before you for formal action and everyone votes on it and it's approved in less than 90 seconds when in the ordinary context of discussion, you might have that be maybe a 30 or 40 minute conversation in a regular meeting session."
The goal would be to continue to allow the public to pay attention to and have input on even items in these study sessions. Details on timing and frequency of the meetings still need to be worked out.