The Colorado Springs City Council held its informal meeting Monday.

Among the highlights:

• Councilman Val Snider suggested the council consider time limits on council meetings.“I want council to set priorities for the things that we hear and give the public all the brain power that is due to the public,” Snider said.

Coincidentally, Monday’s meeting lasted only two hours.

Snider also wants to explore the possibility of moving closed legal sessions to before the start of council meetings. He said the council deals with complex legal issues after long meetings and that council members and city attorneys sometimes have to leave early.

Other council members, including Brandy Williams and Tim Leigh, supported the suggestions.

“It doesn’t do the public any good if we’ve been here for seven hours,” Williams said.

Unless changes are made, Leigh said, the city will “continuously limit” who can run for office. Leigh said the council may even consider a November ballot proposal.

“We need to imagine what City Council looks like,” Leigh said. “We need a salary. We need to restructure these meetings. There needs to be fundamental changes that occur.”

Council members are paid $6,250 a year.

• Doug Price, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, presented a “Welcome Back” campaign to boost tourism after the Waldo Canyon fire.

“Tourism is just slow to recover due to this negative perception” of the most destructive wildfire in state history, Price said. “There’s not a whole lot we can do about that.”

The bureau is spending $100,000 and trying to raise an additional $100,000 to fund the advertising campaign. Price said the plan is to extend the tourism season that traditionally ends when school starts and change the perception that the city is on fire.“If that impression isn’t changed … that recovery is going to be even longer,” he said.

• Even though ballots have already gone out for the Aug. 28 election on leasing Memorial Health System to University of Colorado Health, the council met in closed legal session to receive “legal advice and negotiation consultation” regarding the proposed lease of Memorial Health System.

“I have not received any background material so I’m not sure what we’re talking about with the Memorial lease, especially since the fact that it’s kind of done and we’re voting on it now,” council President Scott Hente told City Attorney Chris Melcher.

Melcher said he had an “oral update” that wouldn’t take too long.

“Is it germane with the vote going on right now?” Hente asked.

“Is it. It is,” Melcher responded.

“OK. I’ll trust you on that,” Hente said.

The council voted 8-0 to meet in executive session. Councilwoman Angela Dougan is in Denver until Thursday attending an energy summit, she said in an email to The Gazette.

FILE – In this Jan. 21, 2010 file photo Debra Michaels, Chemical Operations Manager uses a flashlight to inspect mustard agent shells in one of the bunkers at the Pueblo Army Chemical Storage facility in Pueblo, Colo.. Blowing up defective chemical weapons inside a closed chamber in Colorado would cause no significant environmental impacts, the Army said Monday August 13. The finding, which was expected, brings the Army one step closer to destroying an estimated 780,000 shells containing 2,600 tons of mustard agent stored at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in southern Colorado.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File) Photo by STF

Ed Andrieski