Shorter meetings may help decisions and keep Bend city councilors smiling. (City of Bend)

We love Bend City Council meetings. We love the plots, the continuing storylines, the cameos, the recurring characters, the infrequent tense exchanges, the people devoting their time to try to make Bend better.

What we don’t love are the marathon meetings. Anything longer than three hours is too long, for us, at least. And they have gone on past five hours, too often. Is anyone really performing well with that long of a meeting? If you look at the body language of the councilors, some of them sure have looked ready to exit.

The Bend City Council is going to do something about it.

As of the second meeting in August, the Bend City Council is changing its schedule. The work session, sometimes a couple hours, will be scheduled on Mondays in the afternoon. The time has not been set, yet. The actual business meetings will still be on Wednesday and will have a planned start time of 6 p.m. and not 7 p.m., with the goal of finishing up by 9 p.m.

“While it is fun to have seven-hour meetings, the freshest work is not often done at 10:30 at night,” as Councilor Megan Perkins said on Monday.

This should be better for decision making and for people who like to watch what their government does.