I have worked in only one city where the city clerk did not prepare the agenda and I have to say that made my job very difficult. First, city clerks are trained on the legal requirements for agenda preparation. In fact, at every city clerk training there is always a segment on the Brown Act which is almost always taught by city attorneys. It comes to the point where one memorizes the code sections relating to agendas.
When the agenda is prepared by the City Manager’s office, the city clerk is left out of the loop. City clerks are responsible for posting and publishing legal notices and public hearings. A city clerk knows that if a notice of public hearing has been published, the public hearing must appear on the agenda. While it is permissible to continue a public hearing, it still must appear on the agenda. At the meeting, when it is time for the public hearing, the hearing is opened, and the matter continued. The city clerk must then post a notice of continuance within 24-hours of the close of the meeting, or the public hearing will have to be re-noticed. Another posting requirement is when a council meeting is adjourned to another date and time that is not the date of the next regular meeting, a notice of adjournment must be posted within 24-hours. A person who has not been trained as a city clerk does not know these little nuances which can result in very important legal requirements being overlooked, especially if the clerk is not kept informed. In fact, I had an experience where the person preparing the agenda did not put the public hearing on the agenda because the hearing was continued to another date and therefore the person did not think it needed to be on the agenda.
While these are just a couple reasons why the agenda should be prepared by the city clerk and/or the clerk’s office, there are many other factors that cause me to believe that city clerks should be responsible for the agenda process. We will discuss these on other occasions.