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Mayor Ron Sandack’s proposal to change the village council rules to require two commissioners to remove an item from the Consent Agenda to the Active Agenda was put on hold at Tuesday’s village council meeting after most commissioners seemed unwilling to jettison the long-standing prerogative.

The matter was sparked by Commissioner William Waldack’s Feb. 2 request to remove four of six Consent Agenda items to the active agenda, citing his strong belief in a one-week waiting period before putting the items to a vote.

Since the council changed its meeting format in January, village staff has been authorized to place routine and non-controversial matters on the Consent Agenda without a waiting period.

The format change was adapted in order to expedite council meetings, “not to get them over sooner, but rather to focus on substantive matters and let routine matters — typical matters, mundane matters that any organization must tackle — be handled expeditiously,” the mayor said.

“We unanimously changed that rule. Unanimously,” he said. When Waldack asked for multiple items to be removed from the consent agenda, Sandack suggested that the prerogative — which goes back to the era of the five-member council –  “ought to be looked at, not to be used as a weapon, but rather a judiciously used rule of procedure, something used with circumspection and particularity.”  Other villages, including Glen Ellen, require two commissioners to agree before an item is pulled from the Consent Agenda.

However, most council members apparently want to maintain their individual right to request Consent Agenda items to be moved to the Active Agenda.

Noting that the council effected the format change only last month, “I’d like us to hold off on another potential change,” Commissioner Bob Barnett said. “Last week wasn’t typical and I don’t believe anyone expects it to be typical. I would hate to react too much.”

Barnett and Commissioner Marilyn Schnell suggested that many concerns over consent agenda items could be allayed by more off-dais dialogue between council members.

“We each bring our own expertise and our own group of people who talk to us, and as long as we take that and dialogue among ourselves and with staff, we will be able to work it through,” Schnell said.

Council members are allowed to discuss matters one-on-one without being in violation of the Open Meetings Act.

Commissioner Sean Durkin expressed concern that requiring two council members to remove a consent agenda item would be “bringing politics back into it with us lobbying each other just to get something off and a simple item into discussion mode.”

Waldack, who doesn’t hesitate to take the occasional minority position, said the rules change would have addressed a “pebble in the shoe with an amputation.”

“That would be the worse of two evils,” he said.

And although he agreed with Barnett that the format change should be given a six-month trial period, Waldack asked the council to discuss the what qualifies as a “routine” item sooner than that.

“I want guidelines for the Consent Agenda and the ability to pull things off that someone out there would like to know more about,” he said, referring to the public.

“Commissioner Tully was known for being verbose, but a strength I heard time and time again from the public was that he took time to explain issues to the public,” Waldack said of former colleague Martin Tully.

“We’ve lost some of that and if all we do is show up to meetings and vote on stuff, we’re not sharing information with each other sand we’re not sharing information with the folks out there,” he said.

Residents Gordon Goodman, Bill Wrobel and Buzz Whowell commented in support of Waldack’s position.

“I’m a great believer in transparency,” Wrobel said. “Having one commissioner being able to pull something off the Consent Agenda in favor of making it transparent to himself and the public and having dialogue with other commissioners, the mayor and staff I think is tremendous.”

Sandack said the council’s intent was “that matters that are non-controversial ought to be done with quickly so we can spend substantive time dealing with matters of a substantive nature.”

Council meetings are as transparent as possible, with each one broadcast multiple times, podcast and available on the village Web site, he said.

Residents are welcome to comment on the format change “with particularity and specificity,” Sandack said. “With respect to this particular item, the council prerogative will continue as it exists, and will only be revisited if there is a reason to revisit it.”

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