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One Kenai councilman would like to see things the city does in practice be written down as official mandates in the municipal code.

Councilman Bob Molloy has begun what he expects to be a thorough process of altering the city's Rules of Order as they pertain to setting, preparing and distributing the agenda for Kenai City Council meetings, which are conducted on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.

A cursory glance at the city's code shows only one, two-sentence paragraph stating how the council agenda is to be prepared and distributed. By contrast, the section of the code dealing with council members participating in meetings by phone contains no fewer than 17 paragraphs.

"The city has practices," Molloy said. Procedures, however, are not written down as municipal code.

As it stands, the agenda paragraph states the agenda "shall be prepared by the city clerk after consultation with the city manager and the mayor."

The agenda is then to be distributed by the clerk to each council member "at least 24 hours prior to the meeting, and no further items shall be added to the agenda except by majority vote of the (council members) present at a meeting."

Molloy's proposal would add several paragraphs, detailing how the mayor, any council member or the city manager for the city administration may propose an ordinance or resolution and have it placed on the agenda, or how any member of the public may request to have a matter placed on the council agenda.

He plans to introduce an ordinance containing all proposed changes at the next council meeting.

Besides printed rules for introducing items to the council agenda, Molloy is proposing written rules for removing items from the agenda.

He also would like to see a draft of the agenda be circulated to the mayor, council members and the city manager before it is finalized.

Although Alaska statutes require the publishing of public notices of public meetings, Molloy said he would like the requirement spelled out in the city code.

"The public meetings statute requires the meeting notice be published as an ad," Molloy said. "I want our code to cover that."

His proposal states: "Notice of the date, time, place and final agenda for each council meeting shall be given to the public by publication in a newspaper of general circulation and by posting to the city's Web site and at city hall, with publication to be done no later than six days prior to the date of the council meeting ...."

In order for the agenda to be published in a newspaper six days before the council meeting, it would need to be delivered to the newspaper two days before that. Considering the city clerk would need time to prepare the agenda and present it to council members as a draft for their review, the process would be starting not long after the preceding council meeting.

Addressing that scenario, Molloy said council members would need to start thinking about the coming meeting much earlier than now.

"A lot rolls over from the previous meeting (as it is)," he said.

City Manager Rick Koch, who thanked Molloy for including a draft of his proposed ordinance in the agenda packet for the last council meeting, Aug. 20, said the proposed rule could pose difficulty in placing anything of an emergent nature before the council.

Molloy's proposed ordinance does not deal with the actual running of the council meeting.

"When the meeting starts, it's different. This doesn't deal with that," he said. "My proposal doesn't deal with parliamentary procedure."

Molloy plans to introduce his Rules of Order change at this week's meeting Wednesday evening.

Phil Hermanek can be reached at phillip.hermanek@peninsulaclarion.com.