After careful consideration, the City of Quitman Board of Alderman have voted to change the time of their regularly scheduled board meeting on the first and third Tuesdays of each month to 10:00 a.m. This change will take effect on the January 20 board meeting.
Now that the city is livestreaming each of their meetings on YouTube, allowing people to see what takes place at the meeting at any time, the board has decided to change to a time that could be more accommodating to businesses and others who need to come to the meetings to have discussions with the board so that it can be done during the workday instead of after hours, making it more efficient and easier for everyone.
The new time is more beneficial for everyone, and they are more confident in the change since people are still able to see the meetings online to be able to hold the board accountable.
“We felt like it was the best decision to just move it to regular business hours time,” explained Mayor Chris Reeves. “That’s just more normal hours for conducting business. For example, it makes more sense for the attorney to come during normal work hours instead of coming at 5:00 and staying until around 7:00 and then driving back home. At the root of it, I think that we felt that since we’re streaming the videos now and are visible on social media with Facebook and YouTube, then our meetings are pretty much accessible to anybody at any time. We aren’t doing a disservice to the public by moving to an earlier time. It’s just going to be more efficient for us to conduct business and make it where people and representatives in the business community can come to our meetings during business hours.”
Changing the meeting time is also more fiscally responsible for the city.
“Another reason for changing the meeting time was to prevent paying overtime to city employees that are required to be at the meetings,” continued Reeves. “That would be all the department heads and the city clerk. By having the meeting at 10:00 a.m., that overtime is eliminated, saving the city potentially several thousand dollars a year.”
