Colfax Village Board proposing to meet once a month instead of twice a month
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — For the first time in at least 50 years, the Colfax Village Board is considering the idea of meeting once a month instead of twice a month.
If the regular monthly meeting is earlier in the month, and if a special meeting is needed, the special meeting could be held later in the month, said Lynn Niggemann, village administrator-clerk-treasurer, at the Colfax Village Board’s December 13 meeting.
The Colfax Village Board currently meets the second and fourth Monday of the month.
Jeff Prince, village trustee, said that with only one meeting per month, the meetings could end up being longer, and he was concerned that board members would be tempted to “rush through a meeting” instead of carefully considering the items on the agenda.
With one meeting a month, the meetings might be longer than an hour, said Jody Albricht, village president.
Depending on what is on the agenda, over the past decade, village board meetings have been conducted in as little as 10 or 15 minutes or have lasted for well over two hours.
The village board “can’t skip over” the business on the agenda if the meeting is going to run longer, Prince said.
Village residents
Anne Jenson, village trustee, said she was concerned about village residents who might want to address the board on a particular topic.
If the meetings are only once a month, that person might wait up to six weeks before another opportunity would be available to talk to the village board, she said.
Jenson also was concerned that people who have applied for a bartender operator’s license might have to wait up to six weeks before the license is approved by the village board.
In theory, if the village board meets once a month, the meetings should be 30 days apart, but depending on what day of the week is the first of the month, the second and fourth Mondays can be a week earlier in the month or a week later — meaning that it might be closer to six weeks between some of the meetings.
There could be other circumstances as well where residents would need the village board to take action on something but because the board only meets one time per month, the residents could end up waiting a month for the village board’s assistance, Jenson said.
Some things could be handled with a special meeting, but there is enough business in the village for the village board to have two meetings per month, she said.
Townships only hold one meeting per month, Albricht noted.
Depending on the township, the observation of the Colfax Messenger is that town board meetings can be anywhere from something less than an hour to well over two hours in length.
The townships in Dunn County also do not have as many employees as the village of Colfax, do not have a sewer or water utility, do not own an ambulance service, do not have as many residents, and many of the them have much smaller budgets than the Village of Colfax.
Trial basis
Instead of re-writing the ordinance, what about holding meetings once per month on a trial basis? Prince asked.
The village board could change the meetings to one time per month by a resolution that sets the time period for the trial basis, Niggemann said.
If having one meeting per month does not work, the village board can always go back to two meetings per month, Albricht said.
The trial basis would have to be for an entire year to see if it would work to run through the various kinds of business addressed by the village board, such as street construction in the summer and developing the budget in the fall, he said.
If it does not work out very well to meet once a month, maybe by May, the village board will have decided it’s not going to work, and the board can go back to meeting twice a month, Albricht said.
Gary Stene, village trustee, said he had the same concerns Jenson had expressed about instances where timeframes are involved.
The village board meetings should be as “user friendly” as possible for village residents, he said.
Committee meetings will still be held, Niggemann pointed out.
Updates
Jenson said if the village board tries meeting one time per month, she would like updates from village department heads about what has been normal operating procedure and what should have gone to the village board.
“We should be updated so we are not blind sided,” she said.
Niggemann said her administrator-clerk-treasurer’s report and other department reports already are submitted to the village board once a month.
What if Rand (Bates, director of public works) has to buy some equipment or something else comes up that cannot wait three or four weeks? Jenson asked.
Emergencies do not follow the normal rules of coming before the village board for approval, Niggemann said.
If there is an emergency requiring $10,000 that must be taken from the general fund, the village board must be made aware of the situation, Jenson said.
Many village boards and town boards have an established amount that can be spent on an emergency repair or some other urgent item that must be purchased, such as a $1,000 or $5,000, before the emergency repair or the item must be approved by the board.
Another concern about one meeting each month is if there is a situation that requires the village board to go into closed session, Jenson said, which would add another hour or an hour and a half to what might already be a long meeting.
The personnel committee can meet in closed session, Niggemann said.
The fourth Monday of the month could be used for special meetings, Prince said.
Committee meetings can also be held on the fourth Monday, Niggemann said.
Niggemann told the village board she would create a resolution allowing the village board to meet one time per month for a year that board members could consider at the next meeting.