City Council consists of seven members.
Ocean City is ending its “experiment” of holding one of its twice-monthly City Council meetings in the morning.
Starting in 2024, Council began holding its first meeting of the month at 6 p.m. and the second at 10 a.m.
However, the 10 a.m. start time is being scrapped and virtually all of the meetings will be held at 6 p.m. for the rest of the year. The exception will be Council’s annual reorganization meeting at noon on July 3
Council President Pete Madden explained that the 10 a.m. meetings were sometimes in conflict with the regular work schedules of the Council members.
“It was becoming more and more difficult with Council,” Madden said in an interview Tuesday. “It wasn’t working with the work schedules.”
Normally, Council meets on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month in Council chambers on the third floor of City Hall. The meetings are open to the public and include opportunities for members of the public to address the seven Council members.
Madden said the Council members wanted to make sure that they could devote all of the time that was necessary for the meetings, so a decision was made to eliminate the 10 a.m. time slot and start them all at 6 p.m.
City Council President Pete MaddenMadden emphasized that no matter what the meeting start time is, the Council members can always be contacted by the public by cellphone and email.
Starting in 2024, Council decided to have one meeting at 10 a.m. and the other at 6 p.m. to give the public different options for attending the meetings.
“It was an experiment to see if we could do the best we could for the Council members and for the public,” Madden said.
However, it got “tougher and tougher” for all of the Council members to attend the 10 a.m. meetings because of work conflicts, he added.
In 2023, Council changed the time of its meetings from the traditional 7 p.m. start time to 6 p.m. While switching to 6 p.m. proved successful, the Council members agreed later on to also try the 10 a.m. start time to give the public a second option.
When the 10 a.m. time slot was first announced, Madden indicated that if the morning meeting ultimately did not work out, Council could always change it.
Following is a list of the Council meetings that have been changed from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.:
