AURORA | After months of discussion and a recent swell of public participation, council members are leaning toward slightly more relaxed sanctions for speakers who defy the three-minute comment limit.
Earlier this year, council began considering changes to its code governing council meeting procedures and expectations in an effort to promote more civil dialogue. Council meetings have been contentious for years, with community activists protesting regularly through public comment.
On Wednesday, Councilmembers Alison Coombs and Alli Jackson advocated for not having any sanctions and extending public comment, but they were rebuffed by Mayor Mike Coffman and Councilmember Stephanie Hancock, who said the rules are needed.
“We need some structure, we need some discipline in this process, we need some respect,” Coffman said at a City Council rules committee meeting.
Ultimately, the group agreed to only sanction speakers if they violate the time limit two times within a three-month period.
An initial proposal for code changes included adding a sanction for speakers who go over their time that included the potential for a temporary ban on speaking at future meetings. It would have prescribed a 10 second grace period followed by a final warning and then a one-meeting ban.
That proposal was debated at a September council meeting and then sent back to the rules committee for amendments.
Coombs and Jackson said they had received a lot of feedback that the proposed sanction process was too harsh and would discourage public participation. Coombs suggested a number of possible changes, but voiced the most support for not having any sanctions.
“I still think that having created that opportunity (to speak), it’s also incumbent on us to only deprive people of that opportunity if they’ve had the chance to be heard, get a redress of their concerns and also make a mistake and not have that mistake be ‘That’s it. You’re done. No talking at the next meeting,’” Coombs said.
Jackson also said her preference would be for no sanctions on speakers, noting that she considers public comment to be an important part of the Democratic process, not a disruption of it.
“I just worry about more sanctions creating even more disruption or more civil disobedience as a result,” Jackson said. “I just worry we’re not going to see the results we want if we keep moving forward with a more punitive measure.”
Coffman and Hancock were adamant about having some consequence, with Hancock saying she supports strong guardrails.
“We’re a public spectacle, and it’s turned into the theater of the absurd, frankly,” Hancock said. “People need to put on their big girl and big boy pants and act like grown-ups. This coming into the chamber, standing in the well yelling and cursing and screaming at us and then going over their time, knowing that they’ve been warned and then coming up and doing theatrical things. There’s got to be a way for us to say, ‘Look, stop this.’ We need to stop this and gain control back over the chamber and back over our proceedings.”
The city attorney has previously advised that the council is limited in how it can regulate public comment and can’t prohibit certain kinds of speech, like profanity or name calling, because of First Amendment protections.
In addition to the speaker sanctions, the committee moved forward other code changes, including moving council reports to after the first public comment session and before agenda items, as well as offering priority to speakers with young children. Council reports were moved to before public comment in September and, prior to that, were at the end of the meeting.
Speakers with children 6 and under will be able to request priority as an accommodation when they sign up to speak online.
Decorum changes that the council has already made to the code this year include:
- Prioritizing speakers 18 and younger
- Limiting participation in the second one-hour comment period to people who haven’t spoken yet
- Limiting council reports to three minutes
- Removing the restriction on only one person being allowed at the podium during public comments
- Requesting speakers to give their legal name, whether they’re a resident and what ward they live in
- Requiring meeting agendas to be posted five days in advance of the meeting
- Allowing more flexibility for scheduling study sessions