Council votes out of committee some changes to its operating rules

Following up last week’s discussion of some proposed changes to the City Council’s rules and operating procedures, this afternoon in a four-hour marathon session the Council’s governance committee deliberated on fifteen additional amendments and advanced the new rules on to the full Council for final adoption next Monday. It was a mixed bag: some minor technical amendments, three substantial changes (with two IOUs for future work), and a handful of failed attempts to address well-known annoyances.

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Notes from today’s Council meetings

Council President Gonzalez was absent today, an absence that was planned and announced before last Tuesday’s election, and Councilmember Strauss was the designated President-pro-tem to chair today’s meetings. Other than a tense back-and-forth with Councilmember Sawant when he tried to encourage her to wrap up her remarks twenty minutes into a speech this morning, things went smoothly for him. Here’s what else happened. A good chunk of this morning’s Council Briefing, as well as a public hearing in this afternoon’s Council meeting, were devoted to a proposed alley vacation for the Grand Street Commons mixed-use project that will feature 360 …

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