Regents reversing course on meeting schedule

The Board of Regents is expected this month to tweak its meeting schedule again, reducing the total number of meetings earlier approved for 2017 and giving board members more time to consider agenda items.

The expected amendment would reduce the total number of board meetings that regents had approved for 2017. But it would make them two-day affairs - keeping with current practice - instead of collapsing most into a single day, with committee meetings held on other dates.

Regents President Bruce Rastetter said the board decided to reverse course on its new schedule after consulting with members about the travel and time commitment it would require.

'For the general public it's better and for the regents it's better,” he said.

The board is set to vote on the amended schedule during a two-day meeting later this month at the board office in Des Moines.

The volunteer board, which usually meets at its institutions around the state, has been reconsidering its public meeting schedule since at least June when board executive assistant Laura Dickson told the regent universities that 'The Board of Regents board meetings will soon be taking on a new schedule and structure.”

Her 'confidential” memo, obtained by The Gazette, said regents were considering reducing board meetings from seven or eight a year to four.

The memo also said committee meetings - including the property and facilities committee and the academic and student affairs committee, now typically held in conjunction with full board meetings - would be held at times outside the board meetings.

But the board ended up going n a different direction - calling for more meetings for 2017 than usual. That new schedule, approved in July, called for 14 - eight full board meetings and six committee meetings on different dates.

Regents spokesman Josh Lehman said Tuesday the earlier approved 2017 schedule was just too problematic to pull off logistically.

But although the new meeting schedule largely appears similar to the current one - with eight called for 2017 - there is an important difference:

The full board won't vote on items presented in committee until the following board meeting.

That means, for example, university projects presented in the property and facilities committee meeting in February won't come up for a vote by the board until April.

It's unclear whether that information has been communicated to the universities. The University of Iowa and Iowa State University didn't respond to questions Tuesday.

Rastetter said that if a project coming before a committee needs to be considered for approval on a faster timetable, regents will accommodate.

'If there's something that's critical, we're going to take it up as needed as long as we have the necessary public notices,” he said. 'But I would hope we could adjust to this schedule pretty quickly.”

He said the proposed amended schedule aims to 'take away the worry of people having to travel every couple weeks for a couple different regents meetings” while also giving them more time to consider agenda items.