DATE:
October 21, 2025
TO:
LaTanya Bellow, City Manager
FROM:
April Foran, City Clerk
SUBJECT:
Resolution Of The City Council Of The City Of Emeryville Amending The City Council Rules Of Procedure For Meeting Times, Order Of Business, Agenda Publication Dates, Teleconferencing Procedures, Public Comment Procedures, And Other Procedural Or Legal Updates To Align With Current Practice And The Introduction Of A New Agenda Management System Recommendation
Staff recommends that the City Council adopt a resolution amending the City Council Rules of Procedure (ROP) with a new regular meeting start time, reorganized meeting order of business, changed date of agenda publication, updated teleconferencing procedures to adhere to State law, public comment procedures aligned with current practice, and other minor procedural and grammatical edits.
Background
On February 20, 2024, the City Council adopted Resolution No. 24-14 contracting with Granicus, LLC for a new agenda management system, OneMeeting. The new city website is a Granicus product and the new agenda management software integrates with the website through agenda publication and storage of historical data The City Council and associated meetings can require producing up to five agendas for a single session of back-to-back meetings. The use of multiple agendas is confusing for the public, staff, and the City Council. It also requires significant staff time to create all the separate agendas. Staff recommends that almost all meetings (excluding Closed Session and MESA), be consolidated on one agenda.
OneMeeting is a forms-based system that will create uniform staff reports, resolutions, and ordinances without the need for templates. As changes are needed, they will be made in the system forms. With the introduction of OneMeeting, Emeryville’s agendas will be modernized, simplified, and require less staff resources for creation and publication.
Staff is also recommending other changes to improve efficiency, decrease staff resources, reduce redundancy, and streamline meeting management. These changes include an earlier meeting start time, rearrangement and updating of the order of business, moving the agenda publishing date to six days before the meeting, updating the teleconferencing procedures to align with State law, updating the public comment procedures to reflect current practice, and other minor updates.
Discussion
The City Council Rules of Procedure was last amended on April 4, 2023, to include hybrid meeting procedures and new teleconferencing rules authorized by AB 2449. Those rules have since been updated and are included in the latest amendment.
Consolidation of Agendas
Staff recommends several changes to the agenda process with the implementation of OneMeeting, including consolidating all of the City Council and its affiliate legislative body agendas (excluding MESA) under one agenda. These include the Community Development Commission of Emeryville, the City of Emeryville as Successor Agency to the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency, and the Emeryville Public Finance Authority. Language would be added to the agenda to state, “The City Council agenda will include information that all regular or special meetings of the Emeryville City Council also serve as regular or special meetings of the City of Emeryville as Successor Agency to the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency, the Community Development Commission, and Public Finance Authority when items are listed on the agenda.” MESA and Closed Session meetings will still have a separate agenda. The regular City Council meeting would have a determined start time and if necessary, other meetings, such as a Special Meeting - Study Session would be listed on the same agenda with its start time before the regular meeting.
Regular Meeting Start Time
The City Council meetings currently start at 7:16 p.m. A survey of the smaller cities in Alameda and Contra Costa County all have Council meetings that begin between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. The neighboring cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond begin their meetings at 3:30 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 6:30 p.m. respectively.
Staff recommends a regular meeting start time of 6:30 p.m. For comparison, the chart below lists smaller cities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties and their regular meeting start times. The cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Richmond are listed because they are neighboring cities.
City
Regular Meeting Start Time
Albany
7:00 p.m.
Piedmont
6:00 p.m.
El Cerrito
6:00 p.m.
Lafayette
6:00 p.m.
Berkeley
6:00 p.m.
Oakland
3:30 p.m.
Richmond
6:30 p.m.
With a current start time at 7:16 p.m., once the administrative pieces of the agenda are complete, this often means that action items and their public comment period is not heard until after 7:30 p.m. or later. Staff recommends moving the regular meeting start time to 6:30 p.m. to boost community engagement and be more in-line with other local agencies.
Order and Preparation of Agenda
Staff recommends making several changes to the order and preparation of the agenda in Section 4 of the ROP to increase efficiency and modernize the process.
Order of Business
We recommend the following updates to the meeting order of business:
Remove “Approval of Final Agenda” from special meetings – Use only for regular meetings. Special meetings should be single subject and have very few instances of needing adjustment (but it can still be done by majority vote of Council).
Move “Announcement of Commission and Committee Vacancies” under department head reports.
Remove non-agenda public comment from special meetings (not required by law). Make public comment for “Items not on the Agenda” for regular meetings only.
Add a standing item to the Consent Calendar stating that all Ordinances are deemed read by title only and all further reading waived The Council would then only need to adopt the first reading of an Ordinance, instead of two votes on the one item at a meeting as is current practice. All Ordinances (other than Urgency Ordinances) would still return to Council at another meeting for the second reading.
Remove “List of Upcoming and Significant Agenda Items” from the agenda. This list is often inaccurate and outdated as it is constantly revised.
Agenda Preparation and Publication
Staff recommends shortening the agenda preparation timeline from 22 to 15 days and the length of time of publishing prior to the meeting date from 11 to 6 days. Agenda items would be uploaded into OneMeeting by 5 p.m. on Monday, 15 days prior to the meeting and published on Wednesday, 6 days prior to the meeting. There would be no republishing of the agenda except in urgency circumstances. Republishing is time-consuming as it requires a full re-ordering of the agenda to add (or remove) items. In 2025, staff produced 15 meeting agenda sets (a set representing one evening of meetings) and republished at least one agenda in those sets 12 times.
Moving the publication date closer to the meeting gives staff the opportunity to provide the most up to date information available in their reports. Six days prior to the meeting still allows the public ample time to review agenda items and is longer than many of the neighboring jurisdictions of similar size. The Brown Act requires regular meeting agendas be posted 72 hours in advance.
For comparison, the chart below lists smaller cities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties and the number of days agendas are published before a regular meeting. The cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Richmond are listed because they are neighboring cities.
City
Days Published Before Meeting Date
Albany
5 days
Piedmont
3 days
El Cerrito
5 days
Lafayette
3 days
Berkeley
11 days
Oakland
Unclear (10 or 11 days?)
Richmond
3 days
Teleconferencing Procedures
Section 2.5 has been updated to include information on AB 2302 which went into effect January 1, 2025. It increases the number of times a Council Member may attend meetings remotely under AB 2449 to five times per year as the body regularly meets twice per month.
Public Comment Procedures
Section 5.1 has been updated to align with the current practice of allowing two minutes per speaker, with the ability of the Presiding Officer to adjust the time as necessary. It was also updated to limit the yielding of time to no more than two speakers, while still retaining the Presiding Officer’s discretion on this matter.
Written communications from the public are in Section 5.3. This was updated to remove language that written comment cards are read into the record and added to the agenda. Under current practice, comments are forwarded to Council Members and added to the agenda binder for public inspection.
Other Amendments
Other amendments to the ROP include reordering items to reflect how they appear in other documents, grammatical edits, or amendments that reflect current practice. Most amendments that are non-substantive are listed below. The redlined version of the ROP is attached for review of all changes.
Added the term “or their/other designee” (2.10, 5.2).
Moved the Mayor/Vice Mayor appointment to the first meeting in December as is current practice (2.12).
Removed when check and warrant registers are put on the agenda after a recess period as the check registers will only be added once per month (2.18).
Section 4.7 was removed as “Staff Communication with the Public” is a section on a staff report, not an agenda.
Fiscal Impact
These changes will reduce staff resources necessary to produce and publish agendas. It is anticipated that staff will spend five less hours each week creating, publishing, and republishing the agendas.
Staff Communication with the Public
There has been no staff communication with the public on this item.
Conflict of Interest
There is no conflict of interest associated with this item.
Conclusion
Staff recommends that the City Council adopt a resolution amending the City Council Rules of Procedure (ROP) with a new regular meeting start time, reorganized meeting order of business, changed date of agenda publication, updated teleconferencing procedures to adhere to State law, public comment procedures aligned with current practice, and other minor procedural and grammatical edits.
If approved, these changes would be instituted as soon as practical. The meeting start time would be implemented at the first meeting in December and the agenda publishing schedule in January 2026. Other changes would occur as soon as November 18, 2025, with the first publication of the agenda from OneMeeting.
PREPARED BY: April Foran, City Clerk
Approved and Forwarded to the
City Council of the City of Emeryville:
LaTanya Bellow, City Manager
Attachments
Attachment A – City Council Rules of Procedure - Redline Attachment B – City Council Rules of Procedure - Clean
Draft Resolution
Amendment to the City Council ROP
City Council Meeting | October 21, 2025
City of Emeryville
CALIFORNIA
MEMORANDUM