Everett City Council Restarts Committees

For the last several years the Everett City Council has met as a committee of the whole with presentations or briefings on issues of import made to all seven council members at the same time. Earlier this year the council voted to form three committees. Budget and Finance, Public Safety and General Government. The committees are made up of three council members who then can report back to the other council members during the full meeting. The stated hope was to make things more efficient and also involve the city council earlier in the policy making process.

Tonight marked the first of these committee meetings with the budget and finance committee meeting an hour before the the full city council. Chairman of this committee is council member Scott Murphy. The other committee members are Jeff Moore and Brenda Stonecipher.

Murphy had the committee sit at a less formal conference table as opposed to the regular council seats saying he wanted to have a more informal setting for the committee. For their first meeting the members received the 5th in a series of 2016 budget briefings from Susy Haugen in the city’s finance department showing proposed spending and projections for the next several years. They also received an update on Everett’s Strategic Deficit Advisory Team’s suggestions for trimming costs and increasing revenues.

The committee’s work is televised live on the city’s cable access channel and also streamed live. The public and other council members can come watch the committee work but are not allowed to ask any questions or make any comments during the committee meeting.

The meeting lasted 50 minutes and then at 6:30PM the regular city council meeting began. The first item of business? Susy Haugen delivered the exact same budget briefing to the full council that she had just delivered to the three members of the budget and finance committee.

This was just the first committee meeting. Hopefully the efficiency side of things will improve with time.