Orotina sets its ordinary municipal council sessions for 90 minutes

The Orotina Municipal Council set the maximum duration of its ordinary sessions at 90 minutes and reserved the possibility of extending them up to 150 minutes only through a reasoned agreement approved by an absolute majority. The measure is contained in the reform of Article 44 of the Internal Regulations of the Orotina Municipal Council, approved in Extraordinary Session No. 183, Agreement No. 04, on October 21, 2026, and published in La Gaceta No. 213 on November 10, 2026, page 59, with the official reference IN202601138318.

The regulation was issued by the Orotina council itself and signed by Mayor Margot Montero Jiménez, with the instruction for a one-time publication. The reformed Article 44 replaces the one that was in effect in the Internal Regulations originally published in La Gaceta No. 141 on July 31, 2025, such that the new time limit governs as the sole text of the regulation and not as a transitory exception.

The text coming into effect

The single article of the agreement entirely replaces the previous wording and establishes three linked rules:

• Ordinary sessions are held “for a maximum period of ninety minutes from the time set for their start.”
• Only through a reasoned agreement, which requires an absolute majority, can the session continue “for up to sixty more minutes.”
• The extension must refer to one or several matters “specified in the motion of order presented for that purpose.”
• No ordinary session may extend “for more than one hundred and fifty minutes,” that is, two and a half hours in total.

The staggered design leaves the 90-minute cap as the general rule and turns the extension into an express political decision of the plenary, which must justify the reason and submit it to a qualified vote. The text does not provide for successive extensions: the 150-minute limit operates as the absolute ceiling for each ordinary session.

Absolute majority as the key to extension

The central element of the reform is the requirement of an absolute majority to enable the additional 60 minutes. With this, the extension of a session ceases to be a procedural decision and begins to require the same reinforced support that the regulations reserve for matters of greater weight.

The regulation also ties the extension to the motion of order: the reasoned agreement must indicate the specific matters to be addressed during the extra time, which prevents the use of the supplementary 60 minutes as an open discussion pool. In practice, the council must exhaust its agenda within the initial block or justify in writing and with a qualified vote which points remain pending.

Publication and formal validity

The reform was published in the Regulations section of the November 10, 2026 edition, within the block of municipal provisions, and bears the signature of the mayor as the person responsible for its official dissemination under reference IN202601138318. The underlying agreement was adopted in an extraordinary session on October 21, 2026, meaning twenty days elapsed between the vote and its appearance in the official gazette.

The change affects the daily operation of the council: the duration of ordinary sessions no longer depends on custom or the decision of the presiding officer and is now anchored to a verifiable numerical limit, with a single escape valve subject to a qualified vote. For the residents of Orotina, the most visible effect is that the most contentious discussions must be concentrated into shorter timeframes or negotiated in advance to achieve the majority required to extend the debate.

Source: La Gaceta, No. 213 of November 10, 2026, Regulations section, p. 59 (official reference: IN202601138318).