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PARKERSBURG — Members of Parkersburg City Council are expected to vote Tuesday on changing the starting time of their meetings and altering the public forum.

Those changes, along with the elimination of the council forum and a rule preventing council members from withdrawing sponsorship from legislation after the meeting agenda has been posted, were recommended by council acting as the Committee of the Whole on Jan. 21.

Tuesday’s meeting is still scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in council chambers on the second floor of the Municipal Building. A resolution encompassing all four changes is on the agenda. Passage on one reading is required for them to go into effect.

Council members voted 8-1 to move the meeting start times up a half hour to 7 p.m. The votes to eliminate the council forum, where members have two minutes to speak on any topic, and prohibit members from withdrawing sponsorships once the agenda has been posted passed on votes of 5-4 and 9-0, respectively.

Most of the discussion at the meeting dealt with the public forum, after Council President Mike Reynolds initially proposed creating a separate forum for any topic before the start of the meeting and limiting the existing public forum to agenda items only. As Reynolds proposed it, council members would not have been required to attend the earlier forum, but had a quorum of five or more been present, the activities would have been recorded as part of council’s minutes.

Council members debated that proposal and eventually settled on leaving one public forum on the agenda but letting speakers who wanted to address items on the agenda go first.

The public forum rules give each speaker up to three minutes and allot a total of 30 minutes. Council can vote to extend the time, but Reynolds said he does not believe they should.

“I’ve never understood why anybody would make a motion to extend the time,” he said at the Jan. 21 meeting. “I’ve never understood why we set the rules but then we don’t follow them.”

Council Vice President Roger Brown agreed.

“Thirty minutes is 30 minutes,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s 50 people back there.”

Some council members said the most effective way for people to communicate with their representative is to contact them outside the meeting. But Councilman Zack Huffman said some people may not know who to contact or may want to have their concern or statement as part of council’s official record.

“At the end of the day, we are not protecting public forum for non-agenda items,” he said.

Councilwoman Cathy Dailey noted that the proposed rule change does not prohibit council members from voting to extend the time for public forum.

“He can’t take away your right to say you want to extend time,” she said.

Reynolds said council “very rarely” has been in situations where the public forum time has been extended because of more speakers than time allotted.

The only other item on Tuesday’s agenda is Mayor Tom Joyce’s proposed reappointment of Calib Tisdale and Mike Siebel to the Mid-Ohio Valley Transit Authority, which requires a confirmation vote by council.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

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Proposed council rule changes:

* Regular meetings would start at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.

* Priority to speak in public forum would be given to people addressing topics on the agenda.

* Council forum would be removed.

* Council members could not withdraw sponsorship of legislation after the meeting agenda has been posted.