City Council Meeting Date: February 4, 2025
To: Mayor and City Council
From: Lynette Peterson, City Clerk
Title
Consider Amendments to Council Rules of Business and Appendices.
Body
Action Requested:
The Northfield City Council approves a resolution to approve the amendments to the attached Council Rules of Business and related Appendices going into effect February 18, 2025.
Summary Report:
The City Council conducts an annual review of the Council Rules of Business and related Appendices, making amendments as needed. These were updated on January 7, 2025, however, due to technical challenges with the Granicus VoteCast system, staff is recommending the following changes to the Rules of Business to discontinue use of the VoteCast system starting with the February 18, 2025 meeting. The renewal of fee to continue this additional optional feature is coming due. Therefore, the timing is appropriate to determine whether we continue working to resolve issues or consider discontinuing at this time.
The VoteCast system was implemented just over two years ago, and since then, staff has been working closely with Granicus to address various issues with the software. The City has faced challenges, including login problems for council members, instances where members were unable to vote on items, and the system's inability to keep pace with the flow of motions, seconds, and meeting votes. Additionally, due to concerns about ADA compliance with electronic voting, particularly the need to verbally call out votes for screen readers, the software has not been streamlining meetings as originally expected. Overall, the VoteCast software has not been functioning as efficiently as staff had hoped.
Staff is recommending returning to the Open Public Comment format, with a 20-minute time limit. Public comment would continue to be restricted to items not listed on the current regular agenda. Additionally, residents would only be allowed to comment on the same topic on...
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