AUBURN – Some special meetings and a few tweaks to the regular city council agenda should make council dealings more open, according to Mayor John Jenkins.

He’ll propose a slate of ward meetings to city councilors at their regular meeting Monday, designed to get councilors, city staff and himself out amongst the citizens. The meetings will begin in January in Wards 4 and 5.

“We’ll have some things to talk about, I’m sure, but most of it will be about us listening,” he said. “Each ward has unique challenges, as well as some similarities. Right now, we want to get out and hear what they have to say.”

He’s also suggesting moving the open session on each regular council agenda to the end of each meeting. Councilors will vote on that Monday. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in Auburn Hall.

Currently, the mayor opens each meeting to public comment near the start of the meeting. That period is reserved for public discussion and questions about items that won’t be discussed later on. Open sessions at regular meetings in the past have lasted for as much as an hour.

“We have councilors and staff that are discussing major financial decisions for the city and I want them as fresh as possible for that,” Jenkins said. “We might discuss a certain topic during the meeting anyway. So I want to get the current business done first and out of the way before people come up to speak.”

He also hopes to track their comments better, making sure every question is answered. He’d create a log with each question, who asked it and when. That would be followed by when it was answered and how.

“Right now, there’s no record of questions asked and no record of how they were answered,” he said. “And even if we do answer it, privately or in letter to the person that asked, the rest of the public has no idea what happened. This way, they’ll have a way of seeing how it was resolved.”