Council to address Commissioner absences

(12/10) On the heels of the inability of the Town Council to form a quorum at their November meeting due to the absence of Council members, Burgess Heath Barnes suggested that the Council look into modifying the Town’s code to address Council member absenteeism.

Barnes noted that Walkersville’s code has a clause that allows a council member to be removed if they fail to appear, in person, at three Town Council meetings in a row.

Barnes said, "we all were elected to do the Town’s business, and while I appreciate that occasionally one of us will miss a meeting or two, but we have one Council member who has missed four this year. And if that trend continues, the inability of another member to show up, say because they are sick, will result in the council not being able to form a quorum, as which happened last month, and without a quorum, we can’t conduct important Town business.

Barnes noted that unlike regular jobs, where you don’t get paid if you don’t show up for work, Council members get paid whether they show up or not. "Each of you is being paid $3,000 a year to serve the community. I think the community deserves to get their money's worth out of us. As the Town code is currently written, we have no recourse to address this issue."

Commissioner Ruttlemyer agreed with Barnes. "This has been a longstanding chronic issue for us. When I was Burgess, at one time we went 3 months without having enough members show up to form a quorum, as a result, a lot of Town business had to be put on hold."

Barnes suggested the Council look into changing the code to address how excused and un-excused absences are handled. "Just like Walkersville and Taneytown, we may need to set a maximum number of allowable un-excused absences. It’s one thing to tell us in advance that you can’t make a meeting, it’s something [else to] simply not show up or call two minutes before the meeting to say you're not coming."

In November of 2022, the Walkersville Town Council voted to remove Commissioner Michael McNiesh after he missed three meeting in a row. His fellow commissioners, in voting to remove him, pointed not only to the three-missed meetings in a row, but the fact that he had missed eight town council meetings in total, in their justification of questioning his commitment to his elected office. While Walkersville will allow a commissioner to miss three meetings in a year (but not in a row), the Commissioner will not be paid at all for any further missed meeting.

Emmitsburg allows its Town Council to "compel the attendance of absent members," and while it does dock the salaries of commissioners who fail to attend meetings, the salary reduction only kicks in after missing six meetings in one year. Thurmont’s Town code, on the other hand, is silent on allowable actions against Commissioners who regularly miss meetings.

The Town Council agreed to consider discussing in more detail any possible changes to the Woodsboro Town code to address absenteeism at the January Town Council meeting – providing of course - a sufficient number of Commissioners show up to form a quorum.