Overview
The following document link explains how to CREATE a Consent Agenda in the Agenda Editor. Please review this document link if you have not yet created a Consent Agenda Item in your Agenda.
If you already understand how to create a Consent Agenda Item, this document will explain how to work with a Consent Agenda Item, and its’ children items, during a live meeting.
If created as explained in the above document link, you can easily approve all the items within a Consent Agenda with one vote, OR you can quickly and easily remove one or more individual items from the Consent Agenda, having them discussed and voted on individually.
This document assumes you are familiar with Creating, Preparing and Running a Basic Meeting. We will assume here that you’ve created a meeting via the Home / Select Group / Meeting screen within the Meeting Manager and have established and are creating the agenda for this meeting, including a Consent Agenda Item.
If you have any questions about preparing, or loading/starting meetings, please see the following links:
- Meeting Preparation
- Meeting Prep – Create a Consent Agenda
- Agenda Editor
- Meeting Prep – Create Meetings
- Meeting Prep – Load & Start a Meeting
- Conduct Meeting – Run a Basic Meeting
Details / Sequence of Events
1 – Voting on All Items included within a Consent Agenda – None Pulled
When you are running a meeting and come to the Consent Agenda Item, which has multiple sub-items (children) within it, you can vote on all items as a group, the same as you vote for any other single item. Thus, all the items contained in Consent will PASS or FAIL as a group.
The following sample screens show examples of what a Consent Agenda looks like when it is being discussed and voted on within the Meeting Manager.
When in discussion Mode on the Consent Agenda (there can only be ONE Consent Agenda Item), a screen like the following will display.
- It is like any other agenda item; however, it will have a BLUE “Consent Items” button present.
- Select / Click the Consent Button and the Consent Items Viewer will display, listing every sub-item (children) included within the Consent Item.
- Assuming you wish to vote on ALL items (pulling none) DO NOT REMOVE CHECK MARK on any of these items. Doing so will remove or pull it from the Consent Agenda and move it to the regular agenda to be discussed & voted separately.
- Press OK after you are done viewing.
Public Display View
IF you keyed the list of Consent Items IN the “Item Summary” field of the Consent Agenda Item when creating it, these can be displayed on the Public Display by selecting “Maximize Summary” on the Meeting Manager. We recommend you do key a list of the items in the Item Summary, because they will print within your meeting results file for your minutes. The following sample screen is an example of the Public Display when a list is keyed into the Item Summary field. This has four (4) items contained in it, by your Consent Agenda may contain as many as you wish.
NOTE: You may choose to not display a detail list on the Public Display. If this is the case, you simply don’t need to use the “Maximize Display” function during a meeting.
Voting on the Consent Agenda Item
There is nothing different in the process of Discussion and Voting on the Consent Agenda, from any other item on the agenda. Proceed to Discuss, Motion, Second and move to Voting. The Consent Item will PASS or FAIL just like any other item.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: The meeting results (for your minutes), captured by the system, will document that the Consent Agenda Passed or Failed. However, it does not list all the individual items within the Consent Agenda. For this reason, it is recommended that you key or copy/paste in a list of each item that is within the Consent Agenda. Do this in the Item Summary area of the Main Consent Agenda Item. Then, after voting, your results file will list every item you have keyed within the item summary. As noted further above in this section, we recommend you key the list of consent children items within the “Item Summary” field.
- IF items are requested to be “pulled” from the Consent Agenda during the meeting, you can document this in the Notes for the Consent Agenda before voting. This is explained in the following section. These notes will then also be included in the meeting results file for your mintues.
2 – Pulling Items from Consent to be Voted on Separately
As above, assume you are in Discussion of the Consent Agenda, and as discussion takes place, it is agreed by the members that one (or more) items should be pulled from Consent and discussed / voted separately.
Then, you would open the Consent Item View (select the BLUE “Consent Items” button) and UN-CHECK any of the items you wish to pull and vote on separately. In the example below, I’ve chosen only one item (Waste/Water Utility Disbursements).
Select OK on the bottom left of the viewer window. The Window will close, and the item is automatically included as a regular agenda item, following directly after the Consent Agenda.
Document that an Item was “pulled” from the Consent Agenda
Before proceeding to finalize discussion and Voting on the Consent Agenda, we recommend you document that an item was pulled from the Consent Agenda.
Select the “Open Notepad” button and provide a short explanation why the item was pulled. This will be saved in the meeting results to include in your minutes.
An example is given below.
Close the Notepad and proceed to finish discussion & voting on the Consent Agenda. This process is no different than for any other regular agenda item.
Proceed to Discuss / Vote on the item/s Pulled from the Consent Agenda
The item (or items) selected to be pulled from the Consent Agenda will be automatically placed onto the regular agenda as separate items. They will appear directly following the Consent Agenda. Thus, upon finalizing a vote of the Consent Agenda, any pulled items will be next in line to discuss.
The following sample screen shows the agenda dropdown window. The “Waste / Water Disbursements” item (which was pulled from Consent in the above example) is automatically next in line for discussion and voting. IF you pulled more than one item from consent, you would see each item you pulled as individual agenda items directly following the Consent Agenda item, each in order one after the other.
You would now proceed, as you would with any other agenda item, and continue to discuss all sub-sequent items individually.
Notes / Special Situations
Creating your Consent Agenda in the Agenda Editor, prior to your meeting, is important to understand. There are a few options to consider. You can find out more about creating the Consent Agenda by viewing the following document link.
NOTE: You may only have ONE Consent Agenda item in your agenda at present. OpenMeeting is developing the Agenda module, and in a near future release you will have the option to include multiple Consent agenda types within an agenda.
If you are having issues that are not successfully addressed above, or you are not successful signing into Meeting Manager, please call OpenMeeting Customer Support at 320.249.0555.
