Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Beginning July 1, 2024, City Council will conduct a Work Session at 5 p.m. and a Regular Meeting at 7 p.m. once a month, during the second Tuesday of the month. If that Tuesday is a holiday, the meetings will move to the third Tuesday. On rare occasions, the meeting may be moved to the fourth Tuesdays for special circumstances to accommodate summer breaks or other reasons which may necessitate it. In the past, work sessions and regular meetings were held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, with additional work sessions added as needed.

In accordance with the South Carolina Code of Laws, municipalities are required to meet at least once in every calendar month. Coupled with the other changes such as modification to public comment periods and the use of a consent agenda, council is confident that the meetings will become more efficient, as well as more effective and will likely only require one mandatory meeting per month.

Work sessions may be held on the second, third, or fourth Tuesday as needed. Also, once a quarter, a Capital Projects Workshop will be held as one of the work sessions.

Revised 2024 Council Meeting Calendar

A consent agenda is a grouping of routine items that come before City Council, such as approvals of special events to be held at Waterfront Park. Other matters which are expected to be non-controversial and routine may also be placed on the consent agenda. These items can be approved as a group by City Council. However, Council reserves the right to remove any item from the consent agenda for the purpose of discussion and approval. Consent agendas allow meetings to proceed more efficiently.

City Council will now allow two periods for public comment at each regular meeting. Public comment at the beginning of the meeting will be limited to any items on the agenda. Public comment at the end of the meeting (but before the city manager, mayor, and council members make their reports) will be allowed for any non-agenda related item related to City business. Public comment is allowed either in-person or via Zoom.  Persons wishing to make public comment are encouraged to register with the city clerk prior to the meeting.

Yes. Each speaker will be limited to 5 minutes, unless granted additional time by the chair of the meeting. In the case of City Council, the mayor is the chair of the meeting. Other points:

• No speaker may donate their time to another speaker.
• If there is a single subject group comment, additional time may be granted for that group’s representative to speak.
• If a speaker is going to comment via Zoom, they should contact City Clerk Traci Guldner via email (tguldner@cityofbeaufort.org) BEFORE the meeting to give her their name and address. If a speaker is going to comment in person, they are encouraged to sign a sign-in sheet at least 15 minutes BEFORE the start of the meeting. This sign-in sheet will be placed on the table near the entrance to Chambers. It will ask for speakers’ names and addresses.
• Depending on the number of speakers who wish to speak, Council reserves the right to place tighter limits (2-3 minutes) on the length of each comment, or allow a specific amount of time for public comment period (30 minutes, for example). 
• Public comment allows the speaker the opportunity to make a statement or present information to council. Public comment is not a time to pose questions to City Council or to members of city staff. It is also not a time to debate issues or initiate discussion. Questions can always be sent to the city manager/mayor/council members via email. (Find emails on City Council page.)

Written comments may be submitted into the record of a Council meeting by presenting the written document to City Clerk Traci Guldner. However, the written comments or other information presented for inclusion in the record must be provided either prior to or at the time of public comment, and must be provided in conjunction with public comment. Information provided ahead of the meeting may not be entered into the record in absence of being present for public comment. A copy of the document will be provided to each council member and the mayor. The document does not need to be read aloud but will become part of the meeting record upon request.

Note: City Council’s Manual of Standard Operating Procedures covers these topics in Chapter 8.