Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
JIM TRUDGEON, city clerk, swears in Bessemer's new city council Thursday. From the left are Adam Zak, new mayor; Terry Kryshak, Linda Nelson, Trudgeon, Allen Archie and mayor pro tempore Rob Coleman.
By IAN MINIELLY
Bessemer - After the swearing in of the new city council Thursday in Bessemer, Gogebic County Sheriff's Department deputy Adam Zak was elected mayor 5-0 and Allen Archie was elected mayor pro tempore.
With that bit of housecleaning done, the new council began discussing rules of conduct that will dictate how meetings are conducted for the next two years.
Zak was the top vote-getter in the recent election.
During the final month of the last council's reign, the public outcry over rules governing public comment were questioned and allowing the public to speak on council topics before they were voted on became an issue, with different candidates incorporating it into their election platforms.
Taking the recent past into consideration, city manager Charly Loper brought proposed rules of conduct from the city of Houghton, which she condensed down to a smaller size of rules to follow.
Linda Nelson, re-elected council member, said the proposed rules conflict with the city's charter and she would prefer the continued use of Robert's Rules of Order, which fellow council member Rob Coleman agreed with and supported.
Terry Kryshak brought up the discussion point that in the past, under Robert's Rules, the public was unable to discuss matters because they were unaware the initial moment of public comment near the opening of each session when it was not obvious regarding the topics for the day and no comment had been discussed on the topic yet. Then, when the topic was on the floor, only the council could discuss it and vote before the floor was opened to the public again, at which point it was too late.
Kryshak sought to include additional time for the public to speak before the council voted.
Archie proposed allowing the public additional comments if they had spoken on the topic during the initial public comment section, which the council agreed was a reasonable change for Loper to incorporate in the city's rules of conduct.
Nelson also proposed an unlimited time for the public to speak, instead of the three- to five-minute minute limit of the last council. Kryshak said depending on the topic, they should include a time limit in the event the topic is a heated one.
In the end, the council asked Loper to address its requests for modifying the rules of conduct.
The council designated the Daily Globe and Wakefield News-Bessemer Pick and Axe as the newspaper of record for public service announcement and notices. The city maintained the same day for meetings, the first and third Mondays every month, but changed the meeting time from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Ray O'Dea was hired as city attorney at $115 per hour, with the agreement he will also attend one meeting per month for an additional $100.
Kryshak wanted to seek bids for city attorney so the council could see the resumes and possibly identify any areas of conflict with potential new hires, but the other members seemed determined to hire O'Dea on Thursday.
Coleman said, "We should get one soon (an attorney). We have issues we need an attorney now for."
It is unknown exactly what issues the council already requires an attorney for, as it was not expounded upon during the meeting. The council has a regularly scheduled meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. that will possibly shed light on the issue.
