Want to stay informed locally? Check out your city council’s meeting agendas

City and town council members are elected to consider policies that directly affect your surrounding community and day-to-day life.

They deal with anything from funding public safety and road improvements to OK’ing a restaurant’s liquor license.

How can you know what initiatives are being decided?

Answer: meeting agendas.

An agenda is an itemized list of proposals that elected leaders will consider and vote on, as well as informational reports from city officials.

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Ahead of each council meeting, your city will post the agenda on its website. Physical copies can also be found at city hall before and during the meeting.

Arizona’s open meeting law requires municipalities to make agendas available to the public at least 24 hours before a regular meeting is scheduled to begin.

When does my council regularly meet?

With a few exceptions, each council meets twice a month.

Depending on the city, elected leaders could meet on the first and third Tuesday, or second and fourth Wednesday, or just about every other Thursday. Like the agendas, cities post the calendar of upcoming meetings.

Where on the city’s website can I find my council’s agenda and meeting calendar?

That’ll vary by city. Largely, though, they’ll be found in the Mayor and Council section.

Each city will have a series of drop-down menus, so you may have to poke around to find it. Once you do, you’ll find biographical information about your elected officials plus handy links usually labeled “calendar” and “meetings,” or variations of those.

Again, depending on the city, you should be taken directly to the list of previous and upcoming meetings, where there are clickable links to view the agendas. For other cities, you may need to take an additional step on the next page by clicking an “agendas” link.

(Pro tip: Sign up for the city’s council agenda email list — if offered on the same webpage — so you’ll receive any and all agendas straight to your inbox.)

So what’s on the agenda?

It’s itemized and usually broken down into sections, such as presentations or reports, public hearings, and consent. The latter lists routine or noncontroversial items that councils approve in one block vote.

As you glance through the list of items, you should notice that most of them are clickable links.

If an item or two — or several — happens to pique your interest, click on them to go to the city staff report. There, you can read about the proposal, its background and potential financial impact, as well as the city staff’s findings and recommendations.

How did these items make it onto an agenda and who decides what the council should consider?

Again, no two cities are identical.

Generally, a mayor works with the city or town manager to set the agendas.

Council members can also ask to agendize an item, either during a public meeting or by directly asking the mayor and manager. If the council member gets support from a few of their colleagues, that item is agendized for discussion.

As for other items, those typically go through one or more of the city’s boards and committees, like planning, development review, library, parks and recreation and historic preservation.

Notably, land-use issues like new developments or zoning changes will go to city staff for review. Later, council-appointed planning commissioners are tasked with scrutinizing the projects and making recommendations.

Do boards and committees also have agendas?

They sure do.

Just like council meetings, the city must post agendas for their boards and committees. Often, you can find those in the same place you found the council agendas. Otherwise, cities will generally have separate web pages for their boards and committees.

This story was supported by the Solutions Journalism Network as part of the Advancing Democracy Innovation Fund fellowship.

Reporting by Shawn Raymundo, Arizona Republic

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