The Flowery Branch City Council had several housekeeping items to address at its final meeting of 2017 Thursday evening. While doing so, some city officials brought up the idea of changing the way the city formats its meetings.
Currently, the council meets every second and fourth Thursday of each month, holding both a work session and voting session at the same meeting. Mayor Mike Miller said city officials thought holding both sessions on the same day created some potential problems.
"We've had a couple of situations where some issues have seemed kind of rushed and questions have come up and we weren't able to vote with all the answers we needed," Miller said.
Miller and some other council members proposed a new format in which the city would only vote on issues every other meeting, meaning one voting session per month.
"It's an advantage because it gives council members and staff members (time) to get their questions, answers, any concerns they have with any legislation that comes before the council," Miller said.
One possible issue that officials mentioned, however, is that an ordinance change, such as a rezoning, requires two readings before being voted on according to the city's charter. If the council only held work sessions once a month, it could take two months for such an item to come to a vote.
To avoid that, the council finally decided to keep the meeting format the same, with an informal understanding that anything discussed in a work session will not be voted on until the following meeting.
The city plans to begin the new meeting format with it's first meeting of 2018 in January.
Subdivision receives second-reading approval
During the meeting, the city council also unanimously gave second-reading approval to a proposed 55-unit subdivision off of East Main Street.
The neighborhood is being built by the same builders of the Lights Ferry subdivision in Flowery Branch. It would sit on just over 11 acres of land.
