By Tammy Caputi
The Council is amending the Rules of Procedure on December 2. The justification is to “improve transparency, civility, decorum and public participation.” The changes are “intended to make our meetings more efficient, civil, and legally sound.”
REALLY?
Here are the proposed changes:
- Reduce public comment periods from two to one.
- Move public comments from the beginning of the meeting to the end.
- Reduce speaker time from three minutes to two minutes.
- Forbid the use of city audio visual equipment to play recordings.
- Require two weeks advance notice to consider citizen petitions.
How on earth does this “improve public participation”? Under these new rules, this very topic would be outside the scope of a citizen petition since it was snuck in just before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
So much for the “resident-friendly” council.