The warm, fuzzy feeling in a Bend City Council meeting usually comes during the ”Good of the Order” section, when councilors stand up to read proclamations.

Over the years, the council has used its power of proclamation to bestow days of honor for nuns and college presidents. The council brought awareness to issues such as hunger and diversity. Special Olympic athletes, the 100-year anniversary of the VFW and the school board have been recognized through proclamations.

In 1923, Mayor R.H. Fox proclaimed straw hat day in Bend, requiring every man to wear a straw hat and for the residents of Bend to ”doll up.”

But at least one Bend city councilor believes that proclamations are too time consuming for an already overworked, volunteer council.

On March 15, Councilor John Hummel announced he would no longer support proclamations. It just so happened that the proclamations before him were declaring the Week of the Young Child and Drug Prevention Awareness Week.

Hummel said he doesn’t have an objection to drug prevention or young children and he isn’t even against proclamations. As a volunteer council, he just feels that councilors have more pressing issues to spend their time researching and discussing, such as finding a way to bring public transit to Bend and creating affordable housing.

”I can’t justify spending time on proclamations when we don’t have enough time to work on all the other aspects,” Hummel said.

At its next meeting on April 3, the council will look at revising its procedures declaring proclamations. Currently, the city’s proclamation policy requires a councilor to sponsor the proclamation and a representative from the sponsoring organization to be at the council meeting when the proclamation is read.

In most cases, the sponsoring organization prepares the language for the proclamation.

The entire council votes on the proclamation at the beginning of its meeting and the representative is usually given a few minutes to talk about the organization’s mission and thank the city.

One or two proclamations are read a month, taking about 10 to 20 minutes out of the meeting.

In hopes of saving on council time, a proposal has been made that would require the mayor sign the proclamation and then send it back to the sponsoring organization. The proclamations would no longer be part of the regular council meeting.

Councilor Bruce Abernethy, who sponsored the Drug Prevention proclamation, maintains that proclamations read at a meeting hold community importance. They allow the city to cast attention on local nonprofits and issues, especially when they are televised, he said.

Volunteering with the Meth Action Coalition, Special Olympics and other nonprofits, Abernethy often has strong ties to the organizations whose proclamations he sponsors.

”I think it is a good ritual that has been part of the council meeting and I hope it will continue,” Abernethy said. ”There is a certain part of it that is symbolic, a certain part substantive. I think some are more substantive than others, but I don’t think it takes much time. I don’t think it is broken.”

Hummel said part of the reason he spoke out on March 15 was because he didn’t have enough time to do the research to decide if he really agreed with the drug free workplace program referenced in the proclamation for Drug Awareness Week. The issue raised questions of privacy and employee rights, Hummel said, and required more research.

”How can I spend an hour on that when there are more substantive issues I need to spend time on?” Hummel said.

Most cities have proclamations, either those signed by the mayor or backed by the council, said Steve Bryant, who is the interim executive director of the League of Oregon Cities.

Proclamations usually tend to shy away from partisan, political issues, Bryant said, and are for feel-good kind of topics.

”I think it is a long-standing tradition, I can’t say it hasn’t been debated before,” Bryant said. ”I suspect some council tire of … reading every one of them before council and sometimes wondering why they are necessary and who is listening.”

He also said that many cities have the local mayor signing proclamations, without taking up the entire council’s time.

”But then it doesn’t have the weight and backing of the city council,” he said.

Proclamations in Bend do have a history of controversy.

In 1993, the council endorsed the Great American Meatout Day, which encourages people to not eat meat on the first day of spring, angering local restaurants and beef producers. Two years later, after the council reformed its proclamation policies, controversy was ignited again when it was asked to declare October as Lesbian and Gay History Month.

Gay-rights activists withdrew the proclamation, but not before councilors debated the importance of city proclamations.

Proclamations can also be made for lesser known causes and groups. In the past year, the council recognized National Magic Week, Noxious Weed Awareness Week, Building Safety Week and Physical Therapy Month.

City of Bend Recorder Patty Stell said the council is unusual in putting proclamations on its meeting agenda.

”Rather than just have a mayor sign it, proclamations at a meeting do have a little bit more community awareness,” Stell said.