NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — In the comments at the close of Wednesday's Hutchinson City Council meeting, Mayor Jon Richardson floated an idea about changing when the council meets.
"I would like to talk about moving our meetings back to the evenings," Richardson said. "5:30 p.m. There's a couple reasons. I know this has been done before and the idea was to get more participation from the community and during that phase, it didn't show much more people showing up. I think it's important to recognize that this is an unpaid position, so for people to run for City Council, they need to be able to keep their job. A lot of times, that is a conflict that prevents them from running for City Council. I would like to see our City Council meetings move to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, rather than 9 a.m. on Tuesdays. I know it's controversial, but there are some good reasons for it and I think, just the fact of opening it up for people to be able to run for City Council is a big part of it."
There was a little pushback from council member Stacy Goss just trying to figure out the logistics and council member Greg Fast made a solid point about employees that need to attend.
"My concern is city staff, then they have to be here," Fast said. "We've got the city staff here. Captain Collins, I'm sure, doesn't want to come and look after us in the evening. I'm sure they will do what we ask and be fine with it. Most of them are salaried."
Richardson acknowledges that it can't happen right away.
"I think it's something worth having more discussions about at the very minimum," Richardson said. "It's not something that we have to change for the next meeting, but over the course of the next few months or end of year or beginning next year, we could be looking at something like this."
It's really too late this time around to have an effect on who runs, as the filing deadline was June 1.
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