In our experimentation, we need the timeout functionality but we do not want to show the timer. We set the CSS display to None as explained in the documentation but the timer pops up for a very brief amount of time until the CSS is rendered. It only lasts less than a second, but it creates a glitch in the transition we don't want. Is there a way to mitigate this?

Here is the CSS:

.otree-timer {
  display: none;
}

The glitch is in the attachments.

Do you have the style-tags around the css-command?

<style>
.otree-timer {
    display: none;
}
</style>

Without it, you can probably find the text itself on the page.

It is stored in a CSS file. As I said before it only appears until the CSS is rendered by the browser maybe 0.3 seconds.

I see; sorry, I should have read your text more carefully.

Have you tried placing that code directly on the page with style-tags? 
Or place it in a second css-file and load that one first.