Those who have been critical of another all-nighter of the City Council meeting are correct (Subeck, Wealti, Zepeda-Capistran via Kratz) . . . there is no reason to treat members of the public who have come to speak to us so disrespectfully. No one should have to wait until after midnight to speak to us.
Last year when the smoking ordinance and the lobbying ordinance were on the same agenda, it was a no-brainer that we were heading for a train wreck. However, I think the people who scheduled that meeting wanted it that way. They wanted to try to squelch the discussion on the lobbying ordinance by putting pressure on us to get to the public testimony on the smoking ban.
Last night, having learned our lesson from lobbying and smoking, when it became apparent that some of the issues on the agenda were going to take longer than anticipated, we tried to take testimony then table the issue, so we could take testimony on the next issue, saving the council discussion among ourselves for the end of the evening. While we successfully tabled the discussion on TIF for University Ave when it was clear that we couldn’t quickly resolve it, some alders rejected tabling the Allied Drive issue while nearly a hundred citizens (ironically, many of them were from Allied Drive and they were the folks vocally urging us to move on to the paid sick leave issue) waited to speak about paid sick leave. Many just gave up and went home. Kids were falling asleep in the hallways. People were left standing because there were not enough seats in the council chambers.
This is no way to treat the public who have come to speak to the Common Council, regardless of if we agree with them or disagree with them. The democratic process depends on active citizens who should be allowed to address their government. While it sometimes becomes hard to actively listen to 4 hours of public testimony, that testimony is vitally important.
How to accurately predict how long a meeting will go is a fine art. Just when you think you know, something comes out of the blue that you are not suspecting and takes longer than anyone anticipated. It is an issue I have been working on since 2002 and some things have gotten better:
1. We changed it so that you didn’t have to register between 6:30 and 7:00, but instead you can show up any time before speakers on done on the item you wish to speak to. This allows people to eat dinner and come to the council later if their item is later on the agenda.
2. We allow people with translators to have 6 minutes to speak instead of 3 to allow additional time for the translation.
3. We use a consent agenda to pass all the items that may have people waiting for but are not controversial. This way we can pass 80 – 100 items in one motion and anyone there on those items can go home.
4. When we have several items that were not on the consent agenda, we take the items with public speakers prior to the items that don’t have public speakers.
5. When we only have a few people there to speak on some items that we think will be less controversial, we take their item first so they can go home and avoid sitting through long testimony on another item.
Clearly we have not done enough.
Here’s some other suggestions I have heard:
1. Let anyone speak in an open forum at the beginning of the meeting, that way if they have to go home, they can. Others, if they so choose, they can speak when the item comes up on the agenda. (This is the way it is done at the Board of Estimates.)
2. Find a way to allow people to leave written testimony that would be read at the council meeting if they have to go home.
3. Have automatically scheduled “third meetings” every month and then cancel them if they are not needed.
4. Automatically end the meeting at midnight regardless of if we are finished and continue the following evening.
5. Start our meetings earlier.
All of these suggestions have their issues that make them difficult. And I think we need to spend some serious time trying to figure out how to do this better. I expect that Council President Austin King will make this a high priority for the Common Council Organizational Committee to work on.
Meanwhile, hopefully, we have learned our lesson (again, the hard way) and we will be scheduling a special meeting on Inclusionary Zoning instead of trying to deal with repeal and the various proposed changes on June 6th. I just hope we don’t have to wait months to have this meeting!
Note: please excuse any badd grammar etc. i’m dead tired . . .
