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Do city officials play to the
camera?
Not always unfairly, elected and appointed
officials are occasionally suspected of playing to the camera when meetings are
televised, especially in an election year. During several conversations over
the years, curiosity has been expressed: "Did city commission meetings
last as long before they were televised?" So I have reviewed minutes of
82 pre-video and post-video
meetings of the Royal Oak City Commission and gathered enough information to
offer the accompanying tabulations. Televised meetings began some time in
1985.
Pre-Video Meetings
(in minutes)
| YEAR |
LONGEST |
SHORTEST |
AVERAGE |
| 1975 |
148 |
44 |
91 |
| 1979 |
240 |
143 |
193 |
| 1980 |
216 |
95 |
145 |
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Post-Video Meetings
(in minutes)
| YEAR |
LONGEST |
SHORTEST |
AVERAGE |
| 2000 |
272 |
40 |
131 |
| 2006 |
282 |
78 |
175 |
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Overall, these impressions:
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In 1975, CITCOM met three, four, five (in March) times
a month, so the meetings were generally shorter, although total time
spent in meetings per month was roughly the same as now.
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By 1979, CITCOM was meeting less frequently, so each
meeting lasted longer, and the longest, shortest, and average
meeting-length matched or exceeded current times.
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The number of pages in the minutes seem
to have no correlation to meeting length. One of the longest meetings
(205 minutes on Sep 15, 1980) had only 12 pages; other sampled minutes
contained as few as 9 and as many as 35 pages. The inference, of
course, is that some agenda items require longer deliberation than
others.
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There were indications that CITCOM occasionally took a
15 minute break on those nights when they realized they still had a
couple of hours of work at about 9:15.
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They addressed contractual matters in closed
session after the public CITCOM meeting. These days, the closed
session is held before the public meeting.
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Time of adjournment range from 8:32 to 12:02.
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The average for longest pre-video meeting was
201 minutes; post-video it is 277 minutes, suggesting much longer
meetings currently. The pre-video average of averages was143
minutes; post-video, it's 153 minutes.
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For Year 2006, total minutes convert to 53 hours,
for Year 2000 the figure is 69 hours. Add to that the committee
meetings, homework, handling communication from constituents and
colleagues, and a committed elected official will devote 12 to 20 hour
a week to what is in monetary terms a volunteer job.
Conclusion: Meetings do run longer than before
televising: the "longest" post-video statistic is 282 minutes;
pre-video, it's 240 minutes. And the average-of-averages comparison is
153 minutes post-video to 143 minutes pre-video. The question is:
Are we dealing with cause-and-effect or is it that recent issues by
their nature or history simply need longer deliberations? We report, you
decide.
Supplemental: I stopped looking for more after
these
five years for two reasons: First, I've done enough statistical
work to recognize that patterns were already emerging. Second, I was
spending too much time actually reading the old documents, attracted by
names and issues in those earlier years.
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