Keizer City Council held an extended work session on Jan. 18, 2025, to review and revise its rules of procedure, focusing on agenda-setting, committee appointments and clarity about how council members represent the city on outside organizations.

The council spent most of the session redlining a draft of the rules that the mayor and council president had circulated in advance and that staff then prepared for the meeting. Discussion covered when and how items are placed on council agendas, the process for appointing liaisons and voting members to external bodies, how internal boards and commissions are reviewed, and several housekeeping issues tied to the city charter.

Council members agreed to keep a clear, written agenda-setting pathway for items originating both inside and outside meetings: councilors can place items on an agenda during a meeting under "other business" or through the city manager at least seven days before a regular meeting; additions requested outside a meeting will require the consent of two additional council members. The council preserved the existing practice that bringing a matter back as a formal agenda item requires support from at least three councilors.

On committees and commissions, councilors agreed the rules should distinguish internal bodies (city-created commissions and advisory committees) from outside, intergovernmental bodies and nonprofit boards where Keizer is a member or signatory. The revised text that the council directed staff to prepare will require that internal appointment recommendations be circulated to the full council before final action; for outside bodies that carry voting rights (for example, where the city is a contractual member), the council asked staff to reflect any governing bylaws and make clear the city appointee acts under the scope defined by that external body.

Councilors also asked staff to add a concise statement that committee members must be at least 18 and that, unless a committee's founding document says otherwise, city committees may include a maximum of one non‑resident who must be a property owner, employee or business owner in Keizer. Members said those exceptions already exist by resolution for some committees but that the rules should make the general approach explicit.

Mayor Clark, Council President Starr and staff led the review line-by-line and deferred some technical changes for the city attorney and city manager to finalize. Councilors expressed a preference to discuss committee and proclamation policies during the council's next goal-setting work session so the rules and standing practices align.

The council did not take a formal vote during the work session. The body reached consensus on the substantive direction and asked staff to produce a clean and redlined version of the rules for a future meeting packet, with particular attention to cross‑references to the Keizer City Charter and state public meeting law.

The revised rules are intended to reduce ambiguity — for example, by spelling out the seven‑day advance option to submit an item through the city manager, the three‑councilor threshold for bringing items forward, and the difference between internal liaisons and external voting representatives — and to reduce the number of ad hoc, one‑off approaches to appointments and agenda setting that councilors said have contributed to confusion about roles and expectations.