AGENDA DATE: 2/1/2017
TITLE:
Title
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Rules of Procedure
BODY
SUBJECT/PROPOSAL/REQUEST: Notice of Motion to Amend the Board's Rules of Procedure
ITEM TYPE: Regular Action Item
STAFF CONTACT(S): Walker, Kamptner
PRESENTER (S): Greg Kamptner
LEGAL REVIEW: Yes
REVIEWED BY: Douglas C. Walker
BACKGROUND: The Board adopted its Rules of Procedure, which include three Board policies (collectively, the "Rules"), at its annual meeting on January 4, 2017. Rule M allows the Rules to be amended by a majority vote of the Board at the next regular meeting following a regular meeting at which notice of a motion to amend is given.
STRATEGIC PLAN: Operational Capacity: Ensure County government's ability to provide high quality service that achieves community priorities.
DISCUSSION: The County Attorney began reviewing the Rules in December in order to ensure that they were in compliance with recent First Amendment case law. That review then extended into an examination of the Rules' readability. As a result, the County Attorney has prepared amended Rules of Procedure and Board Policies for the Board's consideration. The proposed substantive changes focus primarily on clarifying the concepts of maintaining decorum and using civil language at meetings and clarifying other existing rules. However, most of the proposed changes are related to the presentation and organization of the Rules: (1) the font size has been increased from 10 to 11 and the justification has been changed from full justification to left justification so that the Rules are easier to read; (2) lengthy paragraphs have been separated into subsections based on their subject matter so that a particular rule is easier to find, and catch lines have been added to these new subsections; (3) section headings and subsection catch lines have been changed from italics to boldface type, which is a more effective signal of a particular rule's subject matter; (4) the R...
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