The Bessemer City Council adopted a new set of rules for its meetings on Tuesday, Oct. 6, and repealed every earlier ordinance on council procedure, according to the text of Ordinance No. 3703 as the city filed it for publication over the name of City Clerk Wanda D. Taylor.
The 28-section ordinance took effect on its adoption and publication. Its full text is published as a legal notice in this edition.
The vote came at the first meeting of the council elected this year, the night after Mayor Louise Alexander and council members Cleo King, Cynthia Stephens-Donald and Valerie Williams took the oath on the steps of City Hall and Circuit Judge David J. Hobdy barred Kenneth Gulley from acting as mayor.
The ordinance sets the council’s meeting schedule: regular meetings in the Council Chamber at City Hall on the first Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. and the third Tuesday at 9 a.m., each preceded an hour earlier by a pre-council conference in the Council Conference Room, and a planning session open to the public in the Multi-Purpose Room on the second Tuesday at 9 a.m.
The mayor is to be given notice of all council meetings and may attend and take part in the deliberations, but may not vote on any matter before the council.
The council president and president pro tempore are to be elected by the members for one-year terms and may be re-elected for one more one-year term. The president presides, decides points of order subject to appeal, and appoints the members of the council’s committees.
The council will keep three standing committees, Finance, Public Safety and Public Works, each with a chairman and two members named by the president. The president may also create special committees of three on single subjects.
The mayor or any two council members may place an item on the agenda, with a cover page naming the sponsor, the date, a short description and the action proposed. Everything to come before the council must reach the council secretary by 4 p.m. on the Thursday before the meeting.
Special meetings may be called by the president, on the written request of the mayor or on the written request of any two members, with at least 24 hours’ notice to the mayor, the council, the city attorney and the council attorney. Emergency meetings require at least an hour’s notice on the bulletin boards at City Hall.
The mayor, the city clerk, the city attorney, the council attorney and the directors of public works, finance and public safety are to attend every council meeting and stay until the council excuses them.
The order of business runs 21 items, from the call to order and invocation through public hearings, the consent agenda, ordinances and resolutions, old and new business and announcements. Public comments come twentieth, just before adjournment.
A motion to reconsider a vote must come from a member who voted on the prevailing side, no later than the next regular meeting, and needs four votes to pass. A call for the question also needs four votes if any member objects.
Members and others who speak may address a matter no more than twice, unless the council consents unanimously, and for no more than three minutes, unless a majority allows more. The member who moved a measure may close debate.
At public hearings, speakers get three minutes and rebuttal speakers two, with two spokespersons on each issue unless the council agrees unanimously to hear more. The president must tell each speaker the limit before the speaker begins.
Outside public hearings, a person who is not a council member may address the council with the permission of the presiding officer, for three minutes including questions from members and the answers. Speakers may not be disruptive, which the ordinance says includes speaking on matters not before the council, and may not discuss the good name and character of an individual. The presiding officer may have a disruptive person removed.
The police chief, or officers he designates, is the sergeant-at-arms. On the presiding officer’s instruction the sergeant-at-arms is to arrest anyone who violates the order and decorum of a meeting, to be prosecuted on a complaint signed by the presiding officer.
The council’s minutes are kept in summary form, not verbatim; a member who wants remarks recorded in full should tell the clerk at the time. Meetings may be recorded under the city’s 2017 recording ordinance, and executive sessions are allowed only as the Alabama Open Meetings Act permits.
When a seat on a city board or commission comes open through resignation, relocation or death, the council is to consider a notice of vacancy at its next regular meeting, publish it for two weeks in a newspaper the council designates and, where possible, on the city’s website, and take resumes for about two weeks after the last publication before filling the seat. A member whose term expires and who wants another may ask the clerk in writing, and the council is to reappoint or advertise the seat at its next regular meeting.
Robert’s Rules of Order govern whatever the ordinance does not.
The ordinance’s preamble says the council adopted it to repeal all prior ordinances on its rules of procedure.