def METHOD_NAME(item):
    """
    Retrieve the event date, defaulting to 9:00am
    """
    date_str = " ".join(item.css("div:first-child::text").extract()).strip()
    title_str = item.css(".committee::text").extract_first()
    time_obj = time(9, 0)
    time_match = re.search(r"\d{1,2}(:\d{2})? ?[apm\.]{2,4}", title_str)
    if time_match:
        time_str = re.sub(r"[\s\.]", "", time_match.group()).lower()
        time_obj = datetime.strptime(time_str, "%I:%M%p").time()
    date_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%b %d, %Y").date()
    return datetime.combine(date_obj, time_obj)