Council agenda item moving to intended position
- Share via
June Casagrande
Somebody was confused. It’s possible everybody was confused.
In January, council members voted to change the order of business
on their meeting agendas. But by the next meeting, they realized that
their new lineup wasn’t what they thought they had approved.
“I wasn’t confused but what happened wasn’t what we intended,”
Mayor Tod Ridgeway said.
Council members wanted to shuffle around the meeting schedule to
move items pulled from the consent calendar until the end of the
night. Much of their reason centered around one gadfly, Balboa Island
resident Jim Hildreth, who, at almost every meeting, pulls from the
consent calendar the minutes of the previous meeting to protest how
his comments had been recorded.
Council members felt it was unfair to make people wait through
these comments for public hearings and other business. They decided
to move discussion of items pulled from the consent calendar to the
end of the meeting -- or so they thought.
At their Feb. 24 meeting, several council members were left
scratching their heads as to why the discussion of pulled consent
calendar items had been moved back only slightly and not all the way
to the end of the meeting as they had thought.
“What they approved in January was just to move the dispensation
of the consent calendar items to be after public hearings,” explained
City Clerk LaVonne Harkless , whose department prepares the agendas.
At the council’s request, the matter will be back on their agenda
at their upcoming meeting.
“What they’ll be considering on Tuesday is to move the
dispensation of consent calendar to be after current business but
before motion for reconsideration,” Harkless explained.
The motion for reconsideration is a formality to allow council
members to question any of their earlier decisions. It is always the
last thing on the agenda.
* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She
may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.