2 weeks Ago By Brennen Kauffman [email protected]
The new leadership for the Colorado Springs City Council has changed the rules and timing for the general public comment before the new council's first regular meeting. Council members Lynette Crow-Iverson and Brian Risley were elected as the council's president and president pro tem on Tuesday. The agenda posted the next day for the upcoming April 22 council meeting showed an immediate change to the section where citizens can bring up items that are not on the agenda.
The regular citizen's discussion time was moved to the end of the meeting and capped at one hour. Each member of the public is given three minutes to speak, meaning a maximum of around 20 people would be able to speak about items that are not up for a vote that day. "These updates are intended to streamline our proceedings and ensure we dedicate appropriate time to both citizen input and the important policy work before us," Crow-Iverson said via email Friday.
City Council meetings begin at 9 a.m. and the public comment portion was normally held during the first two hours of the meeting.
The comments will now come after the council's public hearings and votes on new business, which tend to be the longest and most varied sections on the agenda and will likely push the section until the afternoon or evening. Citizen's discussions had been held around the same time on the City Council agenda since at least 2014, according to agendas available on the city website. The council leaders also enacted two rule changes for public comments during that section.
Citizens can no longer cede their three-minute appearance to another person to let them give a longer comment and the council will no longer accept comments by phone. Murray Relf had been a frequent speaker at City Council meetings over the last year talking about the noise from Ford Amphitheater. At a council meeting in March, Relf was ceded time from three people to give a 12-minute presentation on noise studies and mitigation during the public comments.
"Eliminating the ceding of time to others, which has been apparently an accepted policy, clearly is meant to discourage anyone from actually developing & presenting any meaningful information to council," Relf told the city Friday. The changes only apply to the public comment period for items not on the agenda. For comments heard during public hearings and votes on the agenda the public will still be allowed to cede time to others and comment by phone.
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