A minimally publicized City Council meeting Saturday morning explored long-untouched issues including role of alders in city decisions and their relation to the mayor’s office.

Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said the meeting was spent in part discussing whether or not the Common Council should have a legislative agenda and formulate a two-year plan for their goals, he said.

Council President Lauren Cnare, District 3, organized the meeting, along with the President Pro-Tem Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, District 5, Verveer said. He said only around three-fourths of the council attended.

Cnare said the meeting stemmed from several alders who have been talking about it for years, focusing on the assumption that they have never been able to sit down together and discuss their jobs as a body.

“Each of us gets elected, and we don’t do a lot of best practices identification and sharing with each other,” Cnare said.

She said major issues discussed at the meeting included creating an agenda to determine which issues concern the alders about the city, and a way to share ideas about making the job easier to do.

Another issue brought up was that of committee appointments. Cnare said the council discussed having alders appoint themselves to committees based on their investment in a certain sector of the city.

Currently Mayor Paul Soglin holds the role of committee assignments, which is done through an interview process with him to determine interest in a committee, Cnare said.

Ald. Scott Resnick, District 8, said the meeting was basically a rehashing of what the members want out of the City Council.

Resnick said there was up to an hour of debate over who should make committee appointments. He said they discussed whether it should be the mayor’s office, the council or a combination of both, but there was no resolution on this.

He said the mayor has a very significant majority of power in city decisions. The mayor makes recommendations, and while the council does have a say in the final vote, the mayor has most of the power.

“There is a push for council members to make this decision since the mayor has so many resources and really has the upper hand,” Resnick said.

The council also spoke about their expectations from their jobs and colleagues and also expectations from the community. Verveer said there would be a more detailed discussion next month about what sort of knowledge alders should have.

“There were no decisions of any kind made today,” Verveer said. “I’ve been on the council for quite some time, and we haven’t done anything like this in many, many years.”

Ultimately, there was not a significant amount of discussion surrounding what actually happened, Resnick said. He said the purpose of the meeting was really just to have a positive round table discussion among the City Council members.

Cnare said the next step is to have another meeting that goes into more detail on what an alder’s job description really is and the practices the members plan to share with each other. She said the meeting Tuesday will not discuss those issues.