City councillors who have been demanding access for months to notes of the city’s Covid-19 Expert Advisory Panel were told they could finally see them – thanks to a citizen’s public records request.

Longer terms for city councillors, direct elections of a “strong mayor” and various other options for forms of government came up Wednesday during officials’ first step toward modernizing Cambridge’s charter. But then a basic question got asked: Was the current charter working as intended? 

After city councillors spent a half-hour voting not to reconsider their week-old vote on extending the city manager’s contract, they spent the next hour Monday talking about it. The details of the contract first debated Sept. 14 remain the same.

Reconsideration was filed Wednesday by city councillor Patty Nolan on an 18-month contract extension offer to the city manager. There was too much confusion the previous day for her to be comfortable with the process, she said.

An 18-month contract extension offer for City Manager Louis A. DePasquale was approved Tuesday late in an eight-plus hour meeting, with city councillors arguing over a document that included typos and unanswered mysteries despite not being under an actual deadline to do so.

Under the pressure of a rejected budget item, the city has committed to a long-awaited feasibility study of creating a municipal broadband network to provide residents with cheap, fast Internet access.

A yearslong lack of action on a study of city-owned Internet led to a rare rejection of part of next year’s proposed budget, with city councillors voting 3-6 on Tuesday against funding for the Information Technology department.

Somerville, like Arlington, Boston, Brookline and other cities nationwide plans to restrict vehicle traffic in favor of cyclists and pedestrians on some residential roads. Cambridge remains stuck behind those communities when it comes to pedestrianizing streets.

After the city solicitor doubled down on the legal theory that the City Council can’t ask about the discipline of municipal employees, the council passed its own order expressing “disappointment” in a police superintendent’s tweet that was “unprofessional, disrespectful and vulgar.”

Three city councillors entered their meeting Monday prepared to hear about discipline of a police officer “in executive session if required by state law,” only to discover that some of their peers, and the city solicitor, believed they weren’t allowed to know anything, even behind closed doors.