With debates lasting past midnight and citizen comment defining topics of discussion, some consider Evanston City Council meetings inefficient.

The three incoming aldermen certainly do.

In interviews with The Daily, they have proposed imposing more stringent time limits on the citizen comment period, changing the dates of committee meetings traditionally held the same nights as City Council meetings, distributing meeting information packets earlier and creating rules to deal with absentee aldermen.

Alds.-elect Cheryl Wollin (1st), Delores Holmes (5th) and Anjana Hansen (9th) will be sworn in at tonight’s meeting.

Letting meetings run late can have consequences, Wollin said.

“I don’t think people make good decisions past midnight,” she said. “By the time midnight rolls around, people are really tired.”

Some of the delay is due to citizen comment, which is not to exceed 45 minutes, Wollin said. Recently the limit has seldom been enforced.

The incoming aldermen said they want to make sure they’re in touch with their constituents outside council meetings. Hansen said she plans to set up an aldermanic Web site and phone line and hold periodic town hall meetings. Wollin said she would like to hold “at least quarterly meetings that are open to residents.”

“We need to keep people up to date,” she said. “We get so immersed in these issues that I don’t know that the average person knows what’s happening.”

Hansen, Holmes and Wollin said they would be interested in rearranging the council’s schedule so committee meetings occur on days other than those of the council meeting. Currently, both the Planning and Development and the Administration and Public Works committees meet before the council meeting, so if either one of the committees runs late, there are delays.

Spreading out the schedule could improve the legislative process, Wollin said.

“If somebody brings up an idea nobody thought of, you can’t ask somebody to vote on it the same night,” she said.

The incoming aldermen also said they want to expand both committees to include all nine aldermen so they would all have the same background.

“I want to be effective and I don’t think you could be effective without being clear on the information,” Holmes said.

Releasing the council packets — which contain information on all matters up for discussion — a week earlier might make meetings more efficient, Hansen said. Aldermen receive the packets the Thursday before the meeting, leaving only the weekend to process information and ask questions about proposed ordinances, she said.

“That puts a lot of pressure on city staff to come up with answers in that time frame,” Hansen said.

Simply having new faces on the council may help meetings run more smoothly, both Hansen and Wollin said. While some of the former aldermen have earned reputations as “microphone grabbers,” the new council might be a little more subdued, Wollin said.

“I don’t see any of the personalities who are left as flaunters,” Wollin said.

Some aldermen have attracted attention by not showing up at all. Ald. Joseph Kent (5th) has not been to a council meeting since Nov. 22, and Holmes said this is cause for concern.

“I was appalled that the Fifth Ward has had no real representation in the last eight months, but there’s no rule about absenteeism,” she said “There certainly needs to be some kind of rule that would address that.”

Reach Greg Hafkin at [email protected] and Tina Peng at [email protected].