MARIETTA - In his continuing push for open government, Marietta Mayor Steve Tumlin wants all City Council meetings moved to the council chamber, where they would be recorded and posted on the city's website.

He will ask council members to consider the matter on Wednesday, when he will also ask them to consider creating a temporary citizens committee charged with examining the height of buildings on Marietta Square.

Council meetings are a four-part process every month. First comes the round of seven committee meetings, composed of three council members. Those meetings are presented back-to-back in a marathon evening. Whatever advances out of the seven committee meetings is further discussed during the council's second meeting of the month, which is conducted on a Monday. The Monday meeting is where the agenda is created. The third meeting of the month happens just an hour before the formal council meeting takes place and serves as a dress rehearsal, ensuring the council has what it wants, and where, on the agenda. This is followed by the formal council meeting, which up until Tumlin took office in January, was the only meeting presented in the council chamber and the only meeting recorded and aired on the city's website.

"By the time we get to the regular council meeting, we've had three previous meetings, which most people haven't heard," Tumlin said. "If somebody comes to a council meeting expecting to hear discussion, they don't because it's on the consent agenda (which is a portion of the regular agenda, where a number of items are considered with one vote). They probably don't know what has already been discussed for nine or 10 hours," he said.

Tumlin is not a fan of the cramped fourth floor conference room where the council met for three of the four monthly meetings until he was elected.

"The fourth floor is just not conducive to the public coming. The smallness of the room - 16 metal chairs. People have their back to you. It's just not a good place to communicate in my opinion as far as somebody from the public having an opportunity to sit in a nice forum," Tumlin said.

If the council agrees to move all four meetings downstairs to the council chamber, Tumlin would also like to make one small, but notable tweak to the series of seven committee meetings. The council member who chairs each committee would sit in the mayor's seat, which is located in the center of the council chamber.

"Having the chair in the middle helps in the communication process. It's a small thing, but I think it would have merit," Tumlin said.

As for the proposal to create a task force to study the height of buildings on the Square, that is a result of Councilman Philip Goldstein's plan to bulldoze the two-story Cuthbertson building on North Park Square and replace it with a five-story, 22,000-square-foot office building. Tumlin opposes Goldstein's plan.

"I think the two-story building goes to the historical integrity of the Square," Tumlin said.

But because the zoning ordinance for the Square is written to govern building height using comparable structures, Tumlin does not believe Goldstein can be stopped from his plan, since he can cite the Strand Theatre and the county courthouse as buildings of comparable size. The new task force would examine whether to revise the zoning ordinance to protect the two sides of the Square that currently have just two-story buildings on them, which are the north and south sides.

Each council member and the mayor would appoint two members to the task force, which would then elect its own chair and vice chair, meeting for a period of four months to present a recommendation to the council, Tumlin said.