Compounding the Problem

   In an effort to shorten its famously long meetings and, in general, function more efficiently, the Santa Monica City Council has adopted a new schedule. 
   The Council now convenes at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesdays, disposes of the Consent Calendar, then goes into closed session and reconvenes at 6:45 p.m. for the balance of the public meeting. 
   While this new schedule may suit the Council and City staff, it complicates life for the rest of us. People who want to attend the entire meeting must now arrive in Council chambers almost two hours earlier than they did previously. Then, once the Consent Calendar is approved and the Council goes into closed session, they are left suspended in time for an hour and a half. 
   Given that, some people may opt to skip the 5:15 session, but, innocuous as it may sound, the Consent Calendar is a significant chunk of the agenda. Last week, for example, it contained fifteen items. Among them were Council authorization for an Environmental Impact Report on the City's 415 Pacific Coast Highway project, a revision of the City's investment policy, approval of a $130,000 contract for additional plan review services for the Building and Safety Division, the purchase of two stake bed trucks and one dump collection vehicle, and a $266,400 lease with Wells Fargo for warehouse space for the Big Blue Bus Department. All calendar items are considered and approved in one motion -- unless a Council member removes one or more for discussion. 
   Clearly, the Consent Calendar is the nuts-and-bolts of City business and anyone who wants to know what the City's doing has an interest in it -- yet now it has been isolated, set apart, as if it doesn't really matter. But since millions of dollars are allocated and major projects are approved on the Consent Calendar, it obviously does matter. 
   Since it generally takes no more than a minute of meeting time, separating it from the rest of the agenda does not save time, it merely complicates the lives of City Hall watchers -- whether they're in Council chambers or watching the meeting on City TV. 
   Parenthetically, people who don't have cable TV or who live outside Santa Monica previously could listen to the Council meetings on KCRW from 8 p.m. on. Under the new schedule, the radio audience will now hear even less of the meeting than it heard before. 
   The scheduling of the Council's closed sessions immediately after the Consent Calendar seems a further affront to residents. Closed sessions are generally devoted to Council conferences with legal counsel on existing or new litigation and concern only the Council, attorneys and a handful of other people, while items on the public agenda concern dozens, sometimes hundreds and ultimately everyone in Santa Monica. Why should public meetings take a back seat to closed sessions? 
   If residents have had one overriding complaint about Council meetings, it has been that they have had to wait for hours to speak on whatever item they have an interest in. All too frequently, people got tired of waiting and left before it was their turn to speak. The new schedule will not reduce waiting time.
   In sum, the new schedule has isolated a vital portion of public business, given a higher priority to litigants than to ordinary citizens, and, in the process, gained a paltry 15 minutes over the old schedule -- assuming the Council convenes on time, which it has rarely, if ever, managed to do in the past. 
   We think the powers-that-are should go back to the drawing board and try again. Immediately.