Council Hopes to Adopt New Amendment

Zanesville City Council wants to remind people that meetings are not public forums.

In an effort to reinforce current policies, council agreed to hear an amendment of an existing ordinance in next Monday’s meeting. Council President, Daniel Vincent, said citizens wishing to address council with a problem or concern must always complete a petition beforehand.

“To make it a more productive meeting, to make it a more civil meeting, unfortunately we’ve had some problems with people coming to council, so we need to put some rules in place, some things to make it clear to show expectations of.. if you’re coming to council we welcome that, council wants to hear from people, we want to hear opposing view points, we need that to help make our decisions, but also with that we need to be civil, we need to be courteous,” Vincent said.

He continued to say all issues presented to council must pertain to city council only, and not the federal government or any other topic. Vincent hopes by enforcing these rules will result in more productive and efficient meetings.

“I appreciate all of the work that went into this and this is a considerable amount of work, hundreds of hours have gone into this, and with that I really appreciate the people who came out to speak about this that are passionate about some of the issues with this, passionate about their concerns with this, what this might do to them as far as expressing themselves, expressing their ideas, right now I think we have a pretty good document here and I think council will probably accept this Monday night,” Vincent said.

Discussions on the amendment will continue on Monday August 10. If adopted Monday, the amendment will take effect in 30 days from the meeting.