Set your faces to discuss–for, at least, the city-mandated three minutes during the public comment portion of the Long Beach City Council meeting.

Tomorrow night’s Long Beach City Council meeting is the first viewing of Mayor Bob Foster’s proposal to put all city council agenda items on an agenda 12 days before the council actually discusses them. Uh, and here’s tomorrow’s agenda.

The issues of how well this would work, and how legal it would be–Fourth District Councilman Patrick O’Donnell raised the legality question in a recent Press-Telegram article–remain to be considered. And talked about. At length.

O’Donnell told the P-T he was worried about the proposal taking away his–and Fourth District residents’–voices.

But it’s possible that this time, Foster’s proposed change to Council protocol could make city doings easier to follow–more transparent, as they say in the biz–because, in many cases, agenda items might hang around longer.

There is a caveat, however: there’d be a special area of the agenda for items to be acted on quickly–something called an “expedited items” region. Perhaps that will become the area of the agenda we check first.

This is twice in two weeks that the Council, at Foster’s suggestion, has re-examined the way it does business.

The last was Nov. 20, when the Council voted to change the way members of the public can–or could–pull items off the consent calendar and discuss them.

Now, you have to ask your City Council representative to remove a consent calendar item–and you only get three minutes at the podium to pick it apart.

In other, merrier council fare, the Puka Bar–the time-warp quality Tiki bar in the Wrigley district, and the only bar in town that makes me feel tall–could get an entertainment permit at tomorrow night’s meeting. That’s city staffers’ recommendation to the City Council, anyway: approve it.

I’m already entertained by either the height of the bar stools, or the shortness of the bar. Oh, and the drinks and the atmosphere. Those are good, too.

Tags: bob foster, California, Fourth City Council District, Long Beach, Long Beach City Council, patrick o'donnell, public comment, puka bar, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, transparency, Wrigley District