By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — The Marshall County Council will continue to meet in the mornings for the coming year after a five to two vote on the 2010 meeting schedule.
Marshall County citizen Ryan Ripley had urged the council to consider night time meetings when the issue came up at a previous meeting of the Marshall County Council. President Matt Hassel agreed to table the issue for further discussion by council members with their constituents over the idea.

Council members return-ed to Monday’s meeting having polled their constituents on the subject and the majority said voters in their district had voiced no opinion.
Councilman Fred Lintner said that, “…no one in my district has requested night meetings in 11 years.”
Hassel stated that those he had consulted had expressed no real opinion and that they actually had voiced a concern about whether members of the media would still attend meetings if they were held at night. In his district they had stopped doing so for other government agencies that had gone to meeting in the evening.
Two members of the Council voted against daytime meetings.
Council member Judy Stone voted no for the daytime resolution stating that the majority of her constituents that had expressed an opinion had stated they would prefer the evening option.
Councilman Ralph Booker stated that he agreed with the premise of those who support evening meetings of government bodies.
“People should be able to attend if they desire to attend,” said Booker. “I accept that argument and feel that people should be given the opportunity to attend even if they don’t do so.”
Ripley – in attendance for the meeting — again voiced his disagreement with the actions of the Council in setting meeting times.
“I don’t know how you can justify excluding 85 percent of the taxpayers who are working during the day from meetings,” said Ripley.
Hassel said it was “…not my opinion…” that meeting during the day was excluding anyone from coming to meetings and explained the difficulties the Council had encountered when they had attempted evening meetings in the mid 1990’s.
“All we are empowered to do is find and approve or not approve funding,” said Hassel. “We can’t discipline the Clerk’s office or the Commissioners if they don’t do what we want. We found it very difficult to get answers that we needed to do county business when we met in the evening.”
He stated that communicating with other departments in county government was easier when those departments were around during normal working hours.
The Council will continue to meet regularly in 2010 at 9 a.m. on the second Tuesday of each month.