City Commissioners have changed the time of their regular meetings and work sessions, effective Sept. 1.

The work sessions will now start at 4:30 p.m., versus the previous 5:30 p.m. start, and regular meetings will start at 6 p.m., versus 7 p.m.

The previous meeting times had been in place since July 7, 1981, according to city records.

During several discussions about the change at previous work sessions and commission meetings, some commissioners said they believed the earlier meeting time would allow for more public participation and encourage more candidates for mayor and commission seats.

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The time change passed in a 3-1 vote, with Commissioner Joe McKenney opposed and Commissioner Shannon Wilson absent at the Aug. 18 meeting.

The time change was part of an overall revision to the commission’s rules of conduct and procedures.

McKenney said he was an outlier in opposing the time changes and said there may be “unintended consequences.”

He said the city should want working people to serve on the commission and moving meeting times earlier may be significant to those with careers.

McKenney, a local real estate agent who previously owned the Cartwheel, said that hea leaves work early for the 5:30 p.m. work session and 7 p.m. meeting “so that I arrive prepared,” and takes time to read his agenda packet and ask questions ahead of the meetings.

He said working people bring perspective to the city, whether serving on the commission or participating in the meetings, so they should be careful not to put up another roadblock.

“We should make it easier for citizens to participate, not harder,” he said, and proposed maintaining the meeting times, which was not supported by his fellow commissioners.

Commissioner Casey Schreiner said he’s 44 and works full time, so it was “frustrating to be lectured” about working people.

Schreiner is the chief strategy officer for Alluvion Health.

He said the commission was open to changing meeting times and wasn’t worried about the work sessions since most attendees are there in a work capacity.

During a June 16 work session, Mayor Cory Reeves said they’d been tossing around the idea of changing meeting times and moving them up by 30 minutes.

Commissioner Rick Tryon said to move them up by an hour and that he thought they started the work sessions at 5:30 p.m. to give the working public time to come to the meetings after work.

Schreiner said he didn’t see how starting at 5:30 p.m. impacted public attendance since most work session attendees were there on behalf of their employers.

He said he’d never advocate for the county commission’s schedule, which is regular meetings at 9:30 a.m. the second and fourth Tuesdays and work sessions typically the preceding Wednesdays at 2 p.m.

On regular meetings starting at 7 p.m., Schreiner said that time “in 1981 was very different than it is today.”

He said he hasn’t seen a room full of people most of the time and that controversial issues will draw public attendance, no matter the meeting time.

McKenney said during the June 16 meeting that he was concerned about unintentionally restricting who is able to serve by moving up the meeting times.

Shreiner said that as a person with a day job, he thought it was “a little bit of a Pleasantville idea” that meetings were at night, but thought they’d likely see different people with meetings at a different time.

He said some people will be engaged and show up whenever the meetings are, but there’s no data, “we’re just making this up.”

Schreiner said changing meeting times would shift who comes to meetings, but not narrow the demographic.

Commissioner Shannon Wilson, a retired engineer, said that several organizations she belongs to had moved their meetings up to 6 p.m. from 7 p.m. since it was more convenient and she thought more people would attend a 6 p.m. commission meeting.

Reeves said he wanted to try changing the meeting times to see if they get better turnout.

“If it flops, we’ll go back and do something different,” Reeves said.

The proposed changes to the commission procedures, including meeting times, were on their July 7 consent agenda, but were pulled because commissioners were frustrated the packet didn’t include a strike-through version showing the changes and the document included other changes that commissioners weren’t prepared to address.

A strikethrough version of proposed changes showing what’s being deleted and added is typically done for ordinances, but not resolutions, which is what the procedure update is, according to city staff.

They discussed the proposed changes again during a July 21 work session.

Jeremy Jones, deputy city manager, told commissioners during the July 21 meeting that while updating the meeting times, staff updated the entire document to reflect statutory changes and current practices.

The version of rules and procedures commissioners were considering updating had last had a minor change in 2020 and otherwise been in place since 2019.

During the July 21 meeting, Schreiner asked if they’d have to go through this process again under a new mayor since Reeves had pulled proclamations from meeting agendas.

McKenney reiterated his opposition to changing the meeting times and said, “If I was mayor, I would do proclamations, because it’s the funnest part of the meeting, it fills the room with positive people and I like it.”

Reeves said the city still did proclamations, but not at the commission meetings.

Rachel Taylor, deputy city manager, said that proclamations could still be done under other presentations, which remained in the rules and procedures.

Tryon said proclamations were added to the meeting agendas by a majority consensus of commissioners and could be reinstated.

He said they’d “turned into a big advertisement and just a waste of time in my opinion.”

City Commissioners first directed city staff to prepare a set of rules and procedures specific to Great Falls following a 2018 training session conducted by the Montana State University Local
Government Center.

Staff reviewed adopted resolutions, ordinances, commission motions, meeting minutes, charter
provisions, state statutes, and legal opinions to develop a single reference document governing
commission conduct and meeting procedures, according to staff, which commissioners adopted in November 2019.

In July 2020, commissioners adopted a resolution amending one provision of the rules to allow individuals addressing the commission to state for the record their name and either their address or whether they are a city resident.

The updated version of commission rules of conduct and meeting procedure includes:

• revision of commission work session and regular meeting start times
• revisions necessary to maintain consistency with current state law, city charter provisions, and legislative requirements