Effective next week, Denver City Council meetings will start an hour and a half earlier than currently, with a modified order of business in an attempt to better manage time.
The resolution, unanimously approved by the council Monday, was initially proposed by Council member Chris Herndon to make City Council meetings more efficient. The “business” portion of council meetings will begin at 3:30 p.m., followed by council announcements, presentations and communications. A council member can call out a proclamation during this part of the meeting or later in the meeting.
Next would be bills for introduction, followed by bills and resolutions that have been called out and final consideration of bills and resolutions that don’t have a public hearing. Council would then recess.
The “public” portion of the meetings will start at 5 p.m. starting with public comment at the same time it is now, and council would gavel back in at 5:30. Council members will take up any unfinished business during the 5:30 p.m. session before reading called-out proclamations and going into public hearings.
If a debate stretches past 5 p.m., the proposal would allow council to pause the debate for public comment and then pick up where it left off at 5:30 p.m.
Sign up times for public comment and public hearings would not change. Public comment would continue to open at noon Friday and would close at 4 p.m. Monday, while public hearing sign ups would close when council returns from recess. Meetings would remain open to the public and would be broadcast over Zoom and Channel 8.
“What we can say with certainty on most nights — which we certainly cannot say this now — public hearings will start at 5:30 for some predictability and the ability to end at an earlier time for the public that was watching,” Herndon previously said when presenting the bill to the Finance and Governance Committee.
Budget and Policy Committee meetings will continue to be at 1:30 p.m. on Mondays with a planned end time of 3 p.m. to ensure council members get a break, Herndon said.
Council member Paul Kashmann was more hesitant about the changes at committee, particularly moving public hearings to 5:30 p.m. so folks can get home from work and have enough time to prepare. He also said members of the public typically comment on items on the council’s consent agenda, and they would lose the opportunity to do so under the modified order of business.
Herndon said members of the public, and even council members, can now participate remotely, which makes the 5:30 p.m. start time more desirable because they don’t need to come downtown and find parking. He also said people can speak about items while they are in committee or directly contact their council members to share thoughts on consent items.
Council member Kevin Flynn called out the resolution to comment Monday night and said while he will support the bill, he would have preferred to see public hearings start at 6 p.m. to give folks even more time to get home and prepare for the meetings. He said when the meetings were previously moved from a 6:30 p.m. start time to a 5 p.m. start time, it was with the understanding that public hearings wouldn’t start before 6 p.m.
