AURORA | After weeks of meeting remotely, city lawmakers are back on the dais Monday night, beginning a new format for how the public is allowed to address the City Council.
After months of regular protests, disruptions, ad hominem attacks and city hall hijinks, city lawmakers will meet in a “special session” to take public comment, and possibly clear council chambers of disrupters.
The new rules were adopted two weeks ago and take effect tonight after months of heated council meetings with outbursts, primarily one group of protesters.
Councilmembers Françoise Bergan and Danielle Jurinsky proposed the new resolution to restrict public comment during city council meetings by proposing to shorten “public invited to be heard” to 40 minutes with 2-minute speaking times.
For months, most of the meetings have been dominated by, and even taken over by, regular protesters and commenters focusing on the police-shooting death of Kilyn Lewis last May. Lewis was fatally shot by an Aurora SWAT officer while being arrested.
The city council has met remotely for over a month because of an undisclosed threat reported by Aurora police.
Police officials refused to offer details about the threat, and it’s unclear whether the threat has passed.
Not all city lawmakers were on board with the new commenting protocol.
“This council wants to continue to limit, limit until it goes away,” Aurora Councilmember Alison Coombs said before opposing the changes. “That’s the message we’re sending, is (that) we want to change public comments until you just go away, and I think that’s unfortunate and harmful.”
The new system could allow city council members to turn the volume down or off on their computers while “listening” to “the public invited to be heard” portion of the meeting, critics said.
“(The measure) is taking the public invited to be heard off the council agenda to make it its own special session. It’s actually the same thing Denver does,” City Attorney Pete Schulte told the Sentinel before the meeting. “There may be council members who won’t have their video on, and they’ll be muted because they won’t be speaking, but if the public thinks that there are certain council members who aren’t interested in hearing public comment, then those members of the public might try to make that an election issue.”
Although the public comment segment will now be separate from the city council agenda, it is still considered a meeting, requiring proper public notice, and there’s still going to have to be a quorum present, Schulte said.
“So it’s not like they can all just decide not to listen,” Schulte said. “They’re going to have to be present, and they’re already going to be there because it’s going to happen right after study session concludes.”
The change will give city staff, including the city manager and city attorney, the ability to not be present for the public invited to be heard, and it will require the city clerk or the clerk’s designee to run the session instead of the mayor.
“It’s a way to streamline the process,” Schulte said.
The other rules in the resolution will give Aurora residents priority in speaking as long as they show proof of residency through an ID, utility bill, or something similar. An approved friendly amendment from Councilmember Curtis Gardner also changed the times, having “Public Invited to be Heard” from 6 p.m. to 6:40 p.m. and the city council meeting to begin at 6:45 p.m.
Since it is no longer part of the city council meeting, it is no longer required to be recorded for public viewing. City lawmakers have still not determined whether they will record the comment sessions for public viewing after.
The resolution also makes it “abundantly clear” that city council is allowed to end an individual’s public comment during agenda items if the speaker is not sticking to the topic on the agenda. This was in response to disruptions after “justice for Kilyn Lewis” activists protested city council two weeks ago by hijacking all public comment after the city council voted to remove unrelated public comments at the previous meeting.
“I’m just disappointed that we’ve spent more time on moving the goalpost and changing the rules than actually discussing what justice looks like for this family that continues to come to every single council meeting,” Auon’tai M. Anderson said two weeks ago.
Anderson, a former Denver Public Schools Board member and activist, has been at the forefront of the regular protests since they began in June.
The new proposed resolution also clarifies that if people refuse to leave the lectern during public comment on agenda items, the city council can suspend the meeting and move to a private room at city hall. If disruptions continue, they will be able to go virtual.
The measure also allows for police to intercede in continued disruptions, at the behest of city officials, even summoning police to clear city council chambers.
Looks like the conservative council gets their way again. They will let you talk for 2 minutes but only from 6 to 6:40 pm. And they don’t have to listen. So much for representation. May be time for more protests
When you have nothing constructive to say, even 2 minutes is 120 seconds too many.
Please change the law on reporting barking dogs. The dog 2 doors down barks constantly and my neighbor has said something to them. They don’t care. It’s not OK that I have to listen to this every day almost all day. They leave the dog outside when it’s nice enough and the rest of us have to put up with the barking!
Here’s a thought: City Council should do what our representatives do; hold open forums for their districts where constituents can come and discuss their concerns and ideas. Each City Council member can hold regularly scheduled meetings with their districts or the at-large community. City Council cannot get anything done when these disruptions continue to occur, and the business of running the city needs to move forward. Regardless of which side one takes, the city needs to be able to function under the leadership of the Council. This type if disruptive behavior is never allowed at the State capitol or the US capitol and should not be allowed at City Council meetings.
This is crazy. To think that the black radicals and socialists in Aurora have enough power to create such havoc, with all their basis of facts, been disproved by all the qualified legalities, to our city government is beyond reason. And we have had to deal with them for over eight months.