New State Legislation Makes Requirements For City Council Meetings

Some changes could be coming to the way the Cookeville City Council conducts its business.

Mayor Laurin Wheaton said this comes as a result of two state legislation changes. She said one of those has to do with public comments during meetings, which they already allow at the end of the meeting or during public hearings.

“But this legislation is asking for there to be more public comment throughout the meeting from my understanding which I am actually fine with,” Wheaton said. “I think that’s a great idea. Because I’m just happy that the public shows up to meetings because that means they want to learn more about it or they have a vested interest.”

Wheaton said the council will have to have discussions about how to actually implement this as a council policy. She said when the state hands down new rules, they have to be very careful to apply them how the state intended.

Wheaton said the other change requires city councils to post their agendas 48 hours before meetings. She said that came from certain communities abusing the agenda and adding things last minute.

“Without the public knowing what’s really going on, and this is not us, but this is why the legislation came through from my understanding so they wanted to have a safeguard for that,” Wheaton said. “But this is something that we already do. Every now and then we do have to add an item that we found out from work session to meeting that we needed to add. So there are some provisions in this new legislation for emergency agenda items, say a garbage truck breaks down and we need to go ahead and purchase one, there are provisions in there for that.”