CRESTVIEW — When the City Council meets for its second May meeting, it will actually be meeting in a public workshop setting.
The council unanimously approved turning each second monthly meeting into a workshop. The change, made by resolution, is effective immediately.
City Clerk Betsy Roy said if a regular second business meeting becomes necessary, the workshop can be easily turned back into a regular meeting with 24 hours' advance notice.
"If the need arises we can call a special meeting at 5:30 and the workshop would begin at 6," she said.
Roy had previously introduced the proposal but the council took no action at that time. The need has since become greater, she said.
"It has come back because it's getting harder and harder to schedule workshops," Roy said, due to council members' sometimes conflicting schedules.
Currently the council meets in a business meeting format on the second and fourth Mondays of the month. But the need for more workshops has become evident, Roy said.
"It's the budget season and we're going to need a lot of workshops," she said. "Business can take place on the first meeting, we can have a workshop on the second meeting, and then we can discuss it again at the next meeting."
"I like the idea because it does give us a lot of time to discuss things in a workshop," Councilman J.B. Whitten said.
However, given Monday night's council meeting's 213-page support documentation, "If we go to one meeting a month we could conceivably have 500 pages to review," Whitten said.
"If we want to have a regular meeting, all we have to do is change it to a business meeting instead of a workshop and advertise it 24 hours in advance," Roy said.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Second Crestview monthly meeting will become workshop