The Washington City Council stood up and went to work at Tuesday night's work session, agreeing to do away with Mayor Willie Burns "work sessions" as a method of controlling unruly councilmen. They also agreed on a working document to hold elected officials to a "gentlemen's agreement" on the ethical use of city credit cards.

At the Tuesday night work session, which was attended by some 30 citizens under threatening weather, Mayor Burns said that the city had some $270 million in projects to consider, and the work session was set to agree on how business would be conducted in city meetings. To that end, the mayor asked City Attorney Barry Fleming to "facilitate a discussion" of how the new two-part city council meetings should work. Councilmen Pamela L. G. Eaton, Edward Pope Jr., Nathaniel Cullars, and Ames Barnett were present, with City Administrator Michael Eskew and City Clerk Debbie Danner. Councilmen Rev. G.L. Avery and Maceo Mahoney were absent.

As a preamble to the discussion of how the new two-part city council meetings should work, Fleming described how the state government and different city governments with which he was familiar approached the question.

Senior city councilman Pamela L.G. Eaton, however, said that the issue under discussion should be whether, indeed, the work sessions were needed at all. "We need to first decide if we're even going to have work sessions or go back to the way it was," she said, "I don't think it's fair to our constituents. They elected me into this office,and I think we're asking an awful lot of them to go to two meetings. The city council meetings are for the public to come to hear their council members and ask questions, to be heard and us to answer back, and we use our retreats to hash things out like this, and that's what I think we should go back to."

Fleming said that other cities with which he had worked made the work sessions open for public comment by sign-up just as council meetings are.

Councilman Ames Barnett and Edward M. Pope Jr. agreed, saying that the multiple meetings puts a burden on people to attend or miss out on city business, and that twice-a-year day-long retreats and the occasional called meeting were sufficient.

The councilmen present discussed with Fleming the structure of the city council meeting, how agenda items would be set, and how the agenda could be changed and when.

The councilmen agreed that there should be prior discussion among members on items to be put on the agenda for a vote, hoping to avoid the repeated surprises of spurious motions being brought to the table by councilmen.

Fleming counseled that those guidelines should be put in the form of gentlemen's agreements rather than in an ordinance.

Ames Barnett took on the issue of adjourning the city council meeting. "I'd like it to take a motion, a second, and a vote," he said, "to prevent what happened last month." The other councilmen agreed strongly.

Another issue the councilmen wanted to attend to was a Code of Ethics. "These personal attacks on the mayor, or the city administrator - that needs to stop," Eaton said. "I believe this draft Code of Ethics that Barry gave us would go a long way toward solving the problem. We need to push on with the approval of this Code of Ethics."

Fleming told of the Georgia legislature's reading of an ethics passage when the discussion got too heated, as a cooling-off measure. Councilmen agreed that passing a Code of Ethics would be taken up at the next meeting, and that some cooling-off device be developed.

The councilmen also wanted to discuss the city's travel policy for elected officials, desiring that they have more oversight on spending, limits on travel budgets, and detailed information on officials charges. Fleming said that he had seen detailed and complex travel policies for large governments, but again, he suggested a gentlemen's agreement would sufficefor Washington.

Councilmen discussed limits on when spouse travel expenses would be paid, and said they wanted to keep strict limits on out-of-state travel. They also wanted to add language that told officials to select the most reasonable option when it came to expenses, and that officials document more details on expense receipts.

Council members will have a draft travel expense policy to consider before their regular Monday meeting.

Toward the end of the two-hour meeting, Councilman Barnett said, "I think we're going in the right direction now with these changes - if we hold ourselves accountable."

The mayor and city council will meet in their regular March meeting Monday, March 10, night at 6 p.m. at The Pope Center.