Council shuts down proposal to limit oral comments

After quarreling, City Councilmen decided Tuesday night not to restrict when, and what topics the public may speak about during meetings.

When Pete McCracken requested they limit the first round of scheduled oral communications to matters which are only on the agenda, Greg Shelton and Brian Ward vehemently protested, saying it would silence citizens who attend meetings to air concerns about gang problems, announce community events and present other miscellaneous information which the Council was not slated to discuss.

“It’s small potatoes to let someone be able to get up there and talk about anything they want, especially when you’re already limiting them to three minutes,” Ward said.

California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, affords the public the right to comment on issues before a governing body makes a decision. At all regular meetings, time is provided under oral communications for the public to comment on items not on the agenda.  

McCracken said he wanted to limit oral communications to councilmen’s reports and non-public hearing agenda items, because those who attend meetings for scheduled items have waited as long as an hour or more to have their items discussed while community members take to the lectern. He said his proposal would not violate the Brown Act, because he would allow for comments on any items not on the agenda after the Council finished its business.

“One of the problems we’ve had in the past with oral communications at the beginning is that we have forced people who have something on the agenda to sit and wait while

somebody else talks about something that’s not on the agenda, and my intent on the oral communications was nothing more than we do the agenda, and then we sit here and listen to people as long as we have to,” he said.

But his opponents feared there would be a perception that the Council was trying to limit free speech, and didn’t want to inconvenience citizens wanting to partake in civic affairs.

“I’ve been out there and it takes a lot of guts to get up here in front of the Council to say anything regardless of whether it’s on the agenda or not ... so now we’re going to say you know what, you can wait two and a half hours because someone on the age

nda matters because someone on the scheduled matters doesn’t want to wait five minutes?” Ward asked.

“It’s free speech. I’ve listened to you guys blather on up here from back down there for hours at a time, and you can’t endure three minutes of the haranguing?” Shelton said.

McCracken ultimately conceded upon objections from most of the councilmen, Vice Mayor Cameron Hamilton included.

The Council did change slightly the agenda’s line up by moving reports from the Council to the beginning of the agenda, rather than the end.

At the start of the meeting, Mayor Ron Irish restricted oral communications for the night to only those items on the agenda. Although Shelton objected, the rest of the Council joined Irish.

While they ultimately agreed that restricting the comments to agenda items is a bad idea, the decision comes on the heels of other changes made to the format of meetings since Irish took the gavel.

Open session now starts 30 minutes earlier at 6:30 p.m. and will wrap up by 9:45 p.m. In the past, meetings have gone as late as 1:30 a.m., which some believed discouraged attendance and community participation.

And a few weeks ago, Irish said anyone who spoke out during the pledge of allegiance would be escorted out of chambers by the Police of Chief. He directed his comments to a woman who regularly attends meetings and says “one day” after “justice for all.”