How a Fort Smith Board of Directors Regular Meeting Typically Works

Ready to participate in a Board of Directors meeting and want to be prepared with what to expect before you get there? Here is a rundown of how a regular business meeting typically goes…

They’re held at the Blue Lion building at 101 North Second Street downtown. If you want to speak on an issue that is on the agenda for that meeting, the first thing you need to do is get a signup sheet labeled “Agenda Item Card”. It’ll be on a table at the back of the room (along with printed copies of the agenda,too).

Fill out all the info on the sheet, especially the part about which agenda item you want to speak on. Then you’ll bring it up to the front on the stage area . There will be a City Clerk or Assistant Clerk at the left end seat for you to give it to. You MUST have your sheet turned in to the Clerk before the meeting starts at 6pm. So if you want to speak you ABSOLUTELY have to be there before that.

The meeting kicks off with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. From there, all the agenda items will be addressed, but they will NOT necessarily be addressed in the order they were listed on the agenda. Often, the items that will be the hot topics, like ones that will take the most time, require the most discussion and speakers, and have the most audience in attendance for them, are bumped to the top of the meeting. So just because the item that excites you is listed at the bottom of the agenda doesn’t mean you’ll have to sit through to the end of the meeting to wait for it (and vice versa, if you’re late, you might miss your exciting item even if it was listed at the end of the agenda).

With each item, often the first part is a Q&A from the DIrectors for the relevant staff member or department head. Like if it’s an issue about the Fire Department, the Fire Chief will stand up and a say a little something about the issue and answer their questions. Then the Mayor asks if anyone is signed up to speak on the issue. THAT is where the time for citizens to comment comes in. The Clerk will call on each person by name in turn to come up to the mic. If there are multiple people on each side of an issue, they typically have all of one side speak, then all of the other. Like all the “Fors” then all the “Againsts”.

You’ll have 2 minutes to speak. Many people like to come prepared with what they want to say all written down (and often practiced.) That can be a big help if you’re not sure that you’re going to be able to express everything you wanted to within your time limit. You can already have it timed and cut down to fit so that you don’t get cut off while you’re speaking before you are able to get out what matters to you most. The Mayor or Clerk will let you know when your time is up and will probably let you finish your sentence if you hit your limit, like you don’t generally have to just immediately sit down and shut up mid-word when the time goes off, but they WON’T let you keep going. You’ll want to be ready to stay within your 2 minutes.

You don’t necessarily have to prepare that heavily,though. Lots of people just have a couple of notes they’ve jotted down (especially hard to remember stuff like exact numbers). Lots of other people don’t bring anything pre-written at all, just get up there and speak their minds as it flows out naturally.

If you’re asking a question, there may be a little interaction with the Directors and/or Department heads at that point. But the overwhelming amount of times, there is not. It’s pretty one way. Especially if you’re signed up to make a “For” or “Against” comment. It’s not a debate situation. It’s a you speak your mind and the Directors listen quietly kind of situation.

After all the citizens have spoken, the Directors will discuss the issue outloud if they feel the need to. Sometimes there’s a lot of discussion, among themselves, with the City Administrator, and even with the Department head needing to chime back in. Sometimes there’s not and it basically goes right to a vote (or far more rarely a decision is made like to table the issue and reconsider it at a later date) .

The voting is standard roll call votes. The Clerk calls each Director’s name and they say their vote out loud. The Consent Agenda section of the Agenda is typically made up of multiple separate sections but that whole section is voted on all at once.

After the vote, it’s TOTALLY normal to go ahead and slip out of the meeting if you came for that particular issue and aren’t interested in sticking around for the rest of the meeting. You won’t seem rude for leaving early. Everyone does that.

At the end of the meeting after all of the agenda items have been handled, there’s an Officials Forum part where the Mayor and the Directors talk about anything they wanted to bring up that wasn’t an item on the agenda for voting on that night. Sometimes it’s issues that are going to be considered for a study session or agenda item in the future, but often it’s stuff that isn’t a voteable item, like praising someone in the community who has done something noteworthy or sharing updates on something going on in the community or with the city government.

The very last thing that may occur is that at some meetings there’s an Executive Session. That’s the closed-door part. It’s most often for appointments to boards and commissions, but also used occasionally for stuff like the City Administrator’s job evaluation. The Board ,the Mayor , City Administrator, and Clerk excuse themselves to another room and take care of that task. The public will remain in the big meeting room. Then the Board returns and presents the results they decided on like who got appointed to what commission.

Then the meeting is adjourned.