CROTHERSVILLE
It has become tradition for the Crothersville Town Council to meet at 6 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month at the town hall.
Meeting just once a month, however, often requires special meetings to be called to complete various types of business. Plus, the safety board meets on the first Thursday of each month.
The clerk-treasurer easily could wind up preparing 20 sets of meeting minutes in a year.
Town attorney Jeff Lorenzo also is at those meetings along with the five council members or three safety board members.
During the Jan. 7 council meeting, Lorenzo proposed breaking from tradition by having two council meetings per month. Routine matters, like reports from the engineering and grant consultants and the four town department heads, could be done at one meeting, while the other would deal with more substantive issues, he said.
“Why not just have two meetings a month to avoid two-hour, two-and-a-half-hour meetings?” he asked the council.
“I don’t need any more meetings than I’ve already got. I’m sure you don’t, either. Some of these meetings go on and on,” he said. “You may not want two meetings. I certainly don’t want to attend any more meetings than I have to, but we’re just creating special meetings at almost every regular meeting.”
Part of the reason the regular monthly meetings sometimes go long is because the town doesn’t have a board of public works that cities like Seymour and Scottsburg have. All business has to come to the council by statute.
“You deal with an awful lot of stuff that Seymour, for example, or Scottsburg, they’ve got separate boards to deal with that,” he said.
If there are personnel, litigation or real estate issues that need to be discussed, an executive session could be set a half-hour before a regular meeting instead of having it on another night.
Council Vice President Chad Wilson also suggested incorporating the safety board into one of the meetings so that wouldn’t take up another day each month.
In terms of picking the day and time of each meeting, Lorenzo said he’s open to suggestions because it’s the council’s call.
“It’s just my thought,” he said. “If you don’t want to do it, OK with me. If you don’t want to create another meeting, that’s fine.”
The council members said they would take into consideration other boards they are involved with and see if Lorenzo’s proposal would work.
Councilman Jamy Greathouse suggested keeping the February council meeting at 6 p.m. on the first Tuesday, which is Feb. 4. During that meeting, the council will discuss the proposal again.
“Be thinking. It doesn’t have to be on Tuesday. It doesn’t have to be at 6 o’clock,” council President Danieta Foster said. “We just all need to get our schedules together. Everybody check their schedules.”