Something unusual happened at the Leelanau County board of commissioners meeting last week: Commissioner Melinda Lautner requested that all items be pulled from the board’s consent agenda for further discussion, then voted to approve them all anyway.
According to the Michigan Municipal League (MML), consent agendas contain “routine items that do not need further discussion.” If discussion of an item is desired, the MML says, it can be removed. But the discussions that followed at the Aug. 20 meeting mostly retreaded ground from the previous week.
“Our consent agenda are all those issues that this board unanimously agreed to at our executive committee,” board Chairman Ty Wessell said. “They were noncontroversial. And any commissioner who wishes to have one of the items removed, down for discussion or future action, can do that.”