WESTFIELD – The City Council concluded a 35-minute meeting Thursday night, in part because of whom they elected to serve as President Pro Tem to regulate the meeting in the absence of President Brian Sullivan.
Sullivan and At-large Councilor James Adams both had family obligations, and past President Christopher Keefe, currently the chairman of Legislative & Ordinance Committee, arrived after the 7 p.m. start of the session.
Typically the council elects a past president to serve as the acting president in the absence of the sitting president. Keefe and Brent B. Bean II, chairman of the Finance Committee, are usually called upon to fill that need, but in this case both had extensive committee agendas to present to the full council.
The council members elected Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell to serve as president pro tem and she beamed as she walked to take the seat on the raised speaker’s platform. O’Connell said, as she took the president’s chair, that it has taken her 10 years on the City Council to earn the opportunity to sit in that seat.
O’Connell said, following the adjournment, that the meeting was hastened by the fact that as the president pro tem she did not have the opportunity to speak during flood debate. Traditionally the president does not participate in floor debate because of the need to control the meeting and acknowledge or recognize councilors wishing to speak.
The past practice is that if a president wishes to participate in the discussion he, of in this case she, yields the chair to a councilor sitting next to his raised podium.
O’Connell said she considered that option when the Westfield Gas & Electric Department depreciation appropriation and estimated utilities bills, on the agenda under Reports of City Officers, were briefly discussed and a motion made to file those reports. O’Connell did not yield to that urge and instead remained, for the duration of the session, in the president’s chair.
Several councilors joked as they left the Chambers that it could become a strategy in future election to nominate the most verbose council member for president just to move meeting along more quickly. O’Connell, At-large Councilor David Flaherty and Ward 5 Councilor Robert Paul Sr., could all qualify for election as president under the strategy based upon their past records and participating extensively in debate on the floor.
