The Holyoke Charter and Rules Committee voted to update its council-notice practice to treat email delivery and posting on the city website as sufficient notice for regular meetings and subcommittee meetings, and to move forward with drafting language for a home‑rule petition to amend the charter’s special‑meeting notice provision.

Committee members discussed practical steps for implementation — including continued options for hand delivery when needed, whether agendas could be delivered to a councilor’s city‑hall desk, and who would be the designated person to perform hand delivery or act as an alternate designee — and agreed to clarify the rule text to allow email and website posting as the default means of notice.

Councilor Givner presented orders to accept email as sufficient notice for ordinances, charter rules, and special meetings. Staff and the committee discussed logistics: the administrative assistant reported that delivering local mail to the post office counter marked “local” improved mail speed for members who still request paper copies; attorneys and staff recommended keeping some hand‑delivery language as an emergency fallback.

Attorney Bissonnette advised that the committee can change its city-council rules now for regular and subcommittee notices while the section of the charter that governs special meetings must be changed through the state home‑rule petition process; the committee voted to proceed on both tracks accordingly.

Actions recorded at the meeting included a vote to take items 3 and 4 up as a package; formal committee approval of revised rule language for regular-meeting notice (Rule 4(b)); a motion recommending adoption of charter-language changes for special meetings (to be advanced as a home-rule petition); and a vote to table the related rule text governing special meetings until the home‑rule petition process is complete. The committee also asked staff to file a distinct order for ordinance updates so Ordinance Committee can prepare parallel edits.

Committee members also agreed to discuss internal operational details with the city clerk — for example, replacing references to a “city hall mailbox” with “city hall desk,” and how the clerk may designate an alternate designee for hand delivery — and to coordinate with Holyoke Media about whether a countdown or on-screen indicator could help with enforcement of other rules.