Local Government 101: Local Issues - City Council Meetings

Welcome back to Local Government 101. Today we will be discussing city council meetings. Please refer to my last blog Local Government: Mayors and City Council if you need a city council refresher or to read my bio to determine why I think I'm qualified to write this blog.

Let's dig in. Have you ever attended a city council meeting? If not, I highly recommend you attend meetings, or at least watch online occasionally This will give you have an understanding of what is going on in your community. Meetings differ, but I will attempt to give you the lay of the land as I know it - mainly from my city Thornton, CO though I've attended council meetings around the Denver metro area. 

There is generally a welcome by the mayor, possibly the pledge of allegiance, and even less likely, a prayer. In Thornton we had prayer up until about 2017 when a new set of councilmembers decided it was not in our best interest to have prayer as a part of the meeting. I loved that part of the meeting because, though I'm a Christian, we invited different types of faith leaders to our meetings to pray with and for us. We had Rabbi's, Imam's, Priest, Pastors, spiritual leaders (I remain vague here because I do not know if they were affiliated with a specific organization) and even once the Hari Krishna, among others. I believed this was a way to open up our small community (even though it was a city of 140,000) to other ways of life. In the end, I was over ruled (yes - if you read my last blog, you will know that mayors don't get to make the rules) and prayer was eliminated from our agendas on a 5-4 vote. We did institute a moment of silence after that - and sometimes a faith leader would come utilize their 1st Amendment right and prayed for us during public comment. It was an awesome experience for me even though it didn't go my way because if allowed me insight as to why some people weren't comfortable with that part of the meeting. Either way, the majority ruled on this issue.

Okay - I guess I had to get that off my chest!!! After the welcome, pledge of allegiance and moment of prayer, silence, or nothing at all, meetings might get interesting. I would like to mention that at times we would have our local scouting organization or our color guard do a flag ceremony for the pledge of allegiance. This is an amazing way for our young people to get involved, and for our public safety color guards to be recognized, in honor of our amazing country! But as usual, I digress. 

Roberts Rules of Order: Most city councils, boards, and committees use some form of Roberts Rules of Order, but most don't use all of the rules. The rules help maintain order in the meeting and gives a guide to the mayor and council as to what will be tolerated or not. Recognizing that this ebbs and flows from council to council, there will be differing opinions on my assessment of city council meetings.

Moving on...

Approval of the Agenda: City council will approve or amend the agenda. Staff or a council member may remove  or move an item on the agenda. Usually this is because there needs to be further work on the item before coming to council, if there is a conflict of interest, or if an applicant needs more time. Following are the different parts of the agenda I think are the most important and confusing:

*Please note that this is not representative of all council agendas, but a representation of what you might run across at the meetings.

Presentations - At times an outside partner/stakeholder or staff member would like to make a presentation to city council and the public. Some city council agendas will include this -  these are likely non-controversial presentations that serve to educate the city council and/or constituents on an item that may be of interest.

Public Comment - Public comment is open to the public, and can be on any topic of their choice, though should not include items that are on a public hearing (see below for more on this). Because we have 1st Amendment rights, just about anything goes within that 3-5 minute allotted time period. This can be very uncomfortable for mayors as they attempt to determine when a constituent has crossed the line - because the line is vague and uncertain. Generally, as long as their comments are within the allotted time frame, mayors generally let it go. Even cursing, as unappealing and inappropriate as it may be, is not usually considered a violation of public comment etiquette. If you do participate in public comment, I would suggest you be respectful and stay within the allotted time. This makes for a much better meeting and truth be told, the council members will probably listen intently to what you have to say. Once comments get "out of control", i.e., disrespectful, hateful, vulgar, etc., you have likely lost the majority of the city council. Of course, sometimes people are "planted" by a particular person on council or by a citizen, so this happens, but in general most people attending public comment are genuinely there to be heard on a specific topic. I prefer not to get into the weeds here, but I will give you this link by KPBS in San Diego (not Colorado examples thank you very much) if you want to get a feel for how public comments can go. Warning, they are a little disturbing, so watch at your own risk.

City Council Comments: This is the time for city council members to give their comments. A lot of their comments may be about meeting updates (mayors and council members often serve on other boards or committees on behalf of the municipality), events they attended, and certainly to discuss their priorities. This can also be an interesting or boring time on the agenda, but I will just leave it at that.

Consent Calendar - the consent calendar is a section of the agenda that allows for the city council to approve non-controversial item(s) all at one time and without discussion. A city council member may ask to pull an item off the consent agenda because they would like a discussion around that particular topic, or because they have a conflict of interest. I will do a separate blog around ethics and conflicts of interest because they can get messy and confusing. 

Public Hearings: This is when meetings get tricky - I know, all the other stuff above is tricky in its own way, but public hearings have legal ramifications and must be run properly by the mayor, city council and staff. I am not going to go into extreme detail, but I found a great guide from the International City County Managers Association that will do a better job than me. However, there are a couple of things I would like to mention that really matter. 

• If the public meeting is quasi-judicial you may not contact your mayor or council member. Think of them as a judge that is presiding over a trial. I hope you wouldn't ever call up a judge and try to influence them about a case they are hearing. This is the same for the mayor and council. You have to either write a letter and submit it to the appropriate staff person (this is usually available on municipal websites, but if you are ever in doubt, contact the clerk's office), or attend the public hearing and give public comment. Make sure you give your comment during public comment once the hearing is open. They cannot hear this issue during regular public comment. This may mean you have to stay longer in the council meeting, but it's worth it. They want to hear from you. I can't tell you how many times I would get a phone call from a constituent and then a couple of minutes into the conversation realize that they want to talk to me about an item on a quasi-judicial hearing item. Not to be rude sir/ma'am, but I can't talk to you about this. It is a very uncomfortable situation for the mayor or council member. 
• Please don't assume the council only wants to hear from you if you are opposed to the proposed project. They hear from the naysayers all day long. Make sure to attend if you are in favor of a project in your municipality or neighborhood. They want to hear your side of the issue as well.  I have attended a couple of public hearings and given comment, and made a difference in the vote. A lot of people don't exactly love the idea of multi-family developments popping up in their neighborhoods, with the complaint that it will lower their property values and increase traffic. While these are not factual comments in most cases, it is hard for the council to ignore the complaints when they aren't hearing from the other side!!!
• Some hearings are not quasi-judicial and council members are allowed to take comments outside the hearing, but I promise you that comments are much more impactful if you do those in person.

After that, God willing, the meeting will be adjourned.

I hope this is helpful - again, I did not try to recreate every single type of agenda, but wanted you to have a high level understanding of meetings. Here are some other resources that you may want to consider:

Englewood Colorado - How a city council makes

Cities 101 - Forms of Government - National League of Cities

Join me next time - if you have topics you would like me to cover, please let me know.