Council has only been on an afternoon-evening schedule since April.

The change put the two western Sussex County councilmen at odds over what the public prefers – night or day public hearings.

Councilman Mike Vincent, R-Seaford, said scheduling county council and planning and zoning public hearings at night excludes people who have night jobs. He also said many senior citizens don’t like to drive at night. Vincent said by splitting the hearings, all residents would have access to at least one hearing on an application.

Council President Vance Phillips, R-Laurel, said all meetings should be at night because the vast majority of people who work are on the job during normal daytime hours. “No other local government that I know of has day meetings,” he said.

When three new council members took office to start 2009, council voted to change the meeting time from the long-standing morning meetings and afternoon public hearings to late-afternoon meetings with most of the public hearings in the evening.

With a 3-2 vote, council switched gears again and went back to its original schedule, with one change.

The old schedule included one night meeting the second Tuesday of each month. The new schedule has no night meetings.

The new schedule goes into effect with the first meeting in 2010. Meetings will start at 10 a.m. and public hearings will begin at 1:30 p.m.

The change was not made without debate.

Phillips, long a proponent of night meetings, and Councilwoman Joan Deaver, D-Rehoboth Beach – in rare agreement – voted against the proposal. Councilmen Vincent, Sam Wilson, R-Georgetown, and George Cole, R-Ocean View, voted for daytime meetings.

Vincent, who made the motion for the change, said he had received many emails from constituents in the Seaford-Laurel area who worked at night and could not attend any county public hearings. The county’s two-tier public-hearing system requires most subdivisions and all conditional-use and rezoning applications to have two public hearings, one before planning and zoning and a second before county council.

“Those who work at night have no access to public hearings,” he said. “Now people will have access to one or the other.”

Deaver was critical of the change. “This is unheard of,” she said. “This is against the working people of the county. It’s all about the government and not the people.” “I made the motion for the working people of the county,” Vincent said. “People in Seaford and Laurel have night jobs. I guess people in Lewes don’t have night jobs.”

Phillips said, according to the Department of Labor, 85 percent of county residents who work have daytime jobs while 15 percent work at night. “Evening meetings serve the public better,” Phillips said. Phillips said day meetings also exclude potential council candidates who have daytime jobs.

Wilson said the switch would end up saving the county money. “We’ll have better communications with employees and not have to pay overtime,” Wilson said. Cole, who was one of the driving forces for the first change, said he had reconsidered the time. “I haven’t seen much of a change in attendance, and I have no heartburn going back to the old way,” he said.

Hal Godwin, deputy county administrator, surveyed attendance at meetings over the past two years. He said there appears to be more attendance during day hearings, but he said attendance is also driven by the nature of the applications.

Controversial applications bring out more people whether hearings are in the afternoon or at night.