At its Aug. 11 meeting, the Oilton City Council adopted a policy giving the mayor broad authority over how items submitted for council consideration are handled.
The policy, as currently written, allows the mayor to “organize, revise, combine, or remove agenda items” before an agenda is posted when considered necessary for clarity, compliance with law or administrative efficiency.
That should concern every council member and every resident, regardless of who is mayor today.
I requested the Aug. 11 discussion about agenda procedures because concerns had already developed over how agenda items were being handled. Unfortunately, hand, foot and mouth disease prevented me from attending, and my doctor advised me not to be around others. I have since recovered and am doing much better.
During my absence, the council adopted a policy that formalized much of the very discretion I was asking the council to examine more carefully.
Reasonable agenda procedures are necessary. Deadlines make sense. City employees need time to prepare packets, gather documents and obtain legal or financial review.
But Oilton’s form of government matters.
Oilton’s published City Code identifies the city as operating under Oklahoma’s statutory aldermanic form of government, not the strongmayor-council form. It states that the powers of the City, including determination of policy, are vested in the City Council. It separately identifies the mayor as chief executive and head of the administrative branch.
Preparing an agenda is administrative. Deciding what the elected council is permitted to consider is something more.
This is not an argument that the policy is illegal. It is a question of whether the council should delegate this much discretion without clearer safeguards.
The policy does not establish an appeal process when a council member’s item is removed or substantially changed, require consultation before a material change, or specifically address what happens when the mayor has a personal interest in an item.
Those are safeguards worth considering.
And the concern is not hypothetical.
Earlier this year, the Oilton Public Works Authority voted to remove then-Mayor Patrick Kennedy as OPWA chairman. In Oilton, the mayor also serves as OPWA chairman.
That raises a serious question: If this same type of agenda authority had been in place at the time, could the person whose removal was being considered have simply kept removing that item from the agenda?
I am not answering that question. Council members and residents should ask it for themselves.
A more recent Ward 4 dispute shows why consistency matters.
When Julia Bagwell became mayor, her Ward 4 council seat became vacant. At the March 10 meeting, the council opened the vacancy, heard from two residents, selected Bryan McCool and swore him in that evening.
A few months later, McCool resigned from the council, creating another Ward 4 vacancy. This time, Mayor Bagwell said she would not place the appointment on the agenda because she believed residents needed more time to express interest.
Her concern about public participation was reasonable. But was that decision hers to make for the council?
The city attorney advised that the appointment could be placed on the agenda, that no legal waiting period was required and that the council could fill the vacancy at the same meeting, just as it had done in March.
The final June agenda included the Ward 4 appointment. The question of whether the council should act belonged to the council, and at that meeting the council appointed Jack Martin.
Another dispute followed in July.
Supporting information was submitted with an agenda request concerning Oilton’s burning ordinance and a specific request that it be shared with the mayor and council members for context before the meeting.
Instead,proposedlanguage from that information was placed directly onto the agenda. A request to remove those proposed amendments while leaving the broader discussion and possible action intact was not granted. The city clerk later wrote that, after speaking with the mayor, the request had been “denied.”
These experiences are why agenda procedures were placed before the council.
There is also a broader problem with writing agenda items so narrowly that they begin to shape the decision before council members reach the meeting.
The Aug. 11 agenda, for example, asked the council to approve a $5,517.68 quote from Gregs Auto to repair a city police vehicle.
The public should know how much money is being considered and which company provided the quote. But transparency and restriction are not the same thing.
The agenda could have provided for discussion and possible action regarding repair options for the police vehicle. The Gregs Auto quote, vendor information and exact amount could still have been emailed to council members before the meeting and made available as supporting information.
That would provide the information without unnecessarily writing one particular choice into the action requested on the agenda.
Two days after the new policy was adopted, our council participated in an Oklahoma Well Run Cities training titled Governing as One Body.
We were encouraged to assume positive intent, seek clarification and ask an important question: Who should own this decision?
Those principles should work both ways. When a council member submits an agenda request, assume it has a legitimate governmental purpose. If something is unclear, ask. If legal wording needs to change, explain why.
The training also encouraged us to move beyond asking, “Can we do this?” and ask, “Should we do this?”
That may be the most important question surrounding Oilton’s new agenda policy.
Would council members support the same policy if someone they strongly disagreed with became mayor tomorrow?
Government policies usually outlive the people who create them.
Rules should be written for offices, not personalities.
Assume good intentions. Build good procedures. Protect the structure of Oilton’s aldermanic government. We should preserve the council’s ability to make the decisions its members were elected to make.