It’s a fact that an evening meeting is easier to attend for many people than a daytime one. For that reason alone, it makes sense for the Freeborn County Board of Commissioners to try night meetings, which they will do a couple of times in the next few months.

It’s not the first time they’ve tried it. The problem has been that the meetings, which often stretch for several hours, can wind up ending very late. While it’s inconvenient for many people to attend a daytime meeting, it may also be inconvenient for residents to stay up late for a county board meeting.

There’s no perfect solution; either meeting time will be good for some people and an inconvenience for others. But the board is right to show a willingness to try something new.

Some residents have been more interested in monitoring the county board since last summer, when the courthouse debate got a lot of new people involved. Some have expressed interest in broadcasting the meetings and there’s been an ongoing flap about whether to publish longer or truncated meeting minutes. In this atmosphere of intense scrutiny, anything the board can do to be more accommodating to the public is a smart idea.

Perhaps night meetings will make public access easier. If that happens, and the board gets more positive feedback than negative, they should consider making the night meetings a fixture, either for all meetings &045; or at least, if it turns out to be a suitable compromise, one meeting a month.