On Tuesday night, the City Council was expected to vote on whether or not to remove the Newton Centre Plaza and discuss regulations for the city’s new Building Emissions Reductions and Disclosures Ordinance. The Council was also going to talk about logistics for a new home facade buildout rule and begin discussions about the City Charter.

None of that happened.

Because five councilors were absent, the City Council voted to postpone the matters up for discussion and potential vote to the next meeting, set for March 2.

With more that 20 percent of the Council—Brittany Hume Charm, Becky Grossman, Stephen Farrell, Andrea Kelley and Lisle Baker—missing from the floor, several councilors said there was general agreement that the big items up for discussion and vote (like the Plaza vote) warranted the full 24-members’ attention, or as close to that as they could get.

A spike in City Council absenteeism is common during school vacations, when many families leave the city. There were no reasons given for the specific absences Tuesday night, though.

The sole vote against pushing the items to March was cast by Councilor David Micley, who left his father’s birthday dinner to go to City Hall to vote.

Micley, who acknowledged that his own attendance record is shoddy [he has the most absences over the past two years of any member currently on the board], noted that Zoom is an option for those who can’t be there in person and pointed to the Newton Centre Plaza vote, which was already postponed from a previous meeting, as a reason why voting should still go on.

“A month of delays—is it going to make or break that issue? No, but then there are other issues we need to talk about, and those issues get piled up,” Micley said. “It’s just indicative of us not using our time as effectively as we should.”

Approval for the new police chief was not held up. That was among the items on “first call,” meaning not up for discussion, that were approved. The “second call” items, which are up for discussion, were postponed.