MARIETTA — Marietta City Council members will meet tonight for a work session, one of their four monthly meetings, albeit with some changes brought by Mayor Steve Tumlin.

Since taking office in January, Tumlin has strived to make city government more formal and transparent, in large part by moving more city meetings into the 130-seat council chambers on the first floor of city hall. Two of the four council meetings are now held there, as is the Board of Lights and Water meeting, which was previously held at the utility’s office on North Marietta Parkway.

And although Tumlin denies his changes are aimed at diluting the influence wielded by Councilman Philip Goldstein, who has been on the council since 1980, that is essentially what has happened.

The council’s work session has previously been referred to as the “Committee of the Whole,” and until recently, was held in a cramped conference room on the fourth floor of city hall. But Tumlin said he learned shortly after taking office that the city code has no rules for a Committee of the Whole.

“I’m an accountant, I’m a lawyer, and I don’t like things without rules,” Tumlin said.

“Committee of the Whole didn’t have any rules. It was ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ That’s not my favorite rule. Basically the mayor had no vote and no veto and that got my attention. It is not a council meeting subject to all the rules and regulations of Robert’s Rules of Order. It has absolutely no rules, which is a dangerous way to do business,” he said.

So with council approval, Tumlin asked Cobb’s 19-member legislative delegation to approve a local bill that would change the Committee of the Whole structure to a meeting that falls within the city’s code and operates by Robert’s Rules of Order: a council work session.

That bill, House Bill 1455, was awaiting Gov. Sonny Perdue’s signature as of Friday.

Tumlin also takes issue with having city business meetings in that small upstairs conference room.

“I haven’t always been mayor, and I’ve stood in the hall and sat in the gosh awful metal chairs,” Tumlin said. “It chills somebody’s desire to come see their government in action.”

“That little fourth-floor committee room, if we had something where 30, 35 people wanted to be there, they can’t,” Tumlin said. “The transparency was a major reason [for moving it downstairs], but I thought it brought order, and I think it allows citizens more access to us.”

“I just think the formality aids in communication, both within and without,” he said. Plus, “I’m dying to get out of that conference room. It gets hot.”

Tumlin also expects the council’s Wednesday night committee meetings, and the pre-council meetings, which are held immediately before the formal council meetings, to be moved out of that fourth-floor conference room and into the full chambers.

“To me the city council is comprised of four meetings. All of those ought to be available to the public,” he said.

On the Wednesday committee night, seven council committees meet back-to-back in a marathon session that often lasts past midnight.

Each committee consists of three council members, though all seven council members and the mayor attend the entire night’s session.

Committee night is held in that fourth floor conference room and the council members, city manager and city attorney usually order take-out food and chow down in front of the few citizens who can fit in the room.

Council members, oftentimes Goldstein, are known to walk around the table to whisper something to another council member rather than say it out loud.

Tumlin wants the committee meetings held in the formal chambers, and the chair of each committee would sit at the center of the council’s horseshoe-shaped table.

“I think you have more formality when you’re sitting at a desk, rather than at a table where you eat and get up to get a Coca-Cola, you’re distracted by the glass panel, seeing what people are doing outside,” Tumlin said.

Then there is the night of the formal council meeting.

An hour before the formal council meeting, council members meet for a “pre-council” meeting in the fourth floor conference room, sort of in a dress rehearsal for the formal council meeting.

The pre-council meeting is also on Tumlin’s list for relocation.

Councilman Grif Chalfant, for one, appreciates Tumlin’s changes — and his legal mind.

“In the past when Philip said something, you didn’t have many people that could disagree from a legal standpoint, that would go back and research the code and call him on the statements he makes that are code,” Chalfant said.

“Since Thunder’s been on there, we’ve found many occasions where what Philip said is the code isn’t the code,” Chalfant said, citing Goldstein’s defense of the Committee of the Whole meeting.

The mayor has also directly taken issue with Councilman Goldstein. Last month, Tumlin couldn’t stomach a proposed ordinance Goldstein had drafted that would have ordered the council to hold post-council meeting dinners at the Marietta Diner.

“I think you’re putting lipstick on a pig,” Tumlin told Goldstein. “To tell a council member they ‘shall’ appoint a restaurant or location or whatever you call it is absurd. I’m going to veto this because this is really below the dignity of this council, and our code deserves better respect than this. I mean, this is your own personal little thing.”

Goldstein could not be reached for comment for this article.

As chairman of the Board of Lights and Water, a board that governs the city-owned Marietta Power & Water utility, Tumlin has also moved those board meetings from the Marietta Power building on North Marietta Parkway to the council chamber.

The BLW meetings have traditionally been held in a room on the second floor of the Marietta Power building. Sometimes, the door leading to the second floor is locked.

“If you’ve ever been in the BLW building on a non-board meeting day, the access to the elevator is restricted,” Tumlin said.

“You’re in a strange building, the door may be locked — even though it would be an oversight that would be corrected. But it’s just not friendly, and we’re talking 75 percent of our (city) budget income-wise,” Tumlin said.

Having the BLW board meeting in the council chambers at city hall has empowered the board members, Tumlin said.

“By sitting at a formal table, I think it just gives you the aroma of the taste of how important your job is, as opposed to sitting at a table and have someone talking to you,” he said.

Tumlin has also changed the seating pattern of the BLW. In the past, staff would sit closest to the mayor while the board members would sit further away.

BLW general manager Bob Lewis and City Manager Bill Bruton are still going to have their input, Tumlin said, “but the center of the universe is going to be the board members, which for two hours a month is the case.”

“When Mr. Lewis is sitting by me and somebody else is way down there, I don’t think they’re as engaged. It’s more to the dignity of what they were appointed to do,” the mayor said.

Within the next year, Tumlin also hopes to expand the number of meetings that are recorded on video and can be viewed on the city’s Web site. Only the formal council meeting is recorded and shown that way now. Tumlin said that when he served in the Georgia House, one of the things then-Speaker Glenn Richardson like to brag about was placing every single committee meeting on the Web.

“The city council, at the main meeting, we probably only do one-tenth of the people’s business there,” Tumlin said. “Like the other night, 30 minutes of fluff and 40 minutes of business — and yet we probably had nine hours in it. And most of the public didn’t see the other nine hours or couldn’t catch it if they had insomnia and went to the city Web page.”