Citizens Allowed to Speak On Citilink Resolution… Eventually (video)
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 6/12/08 @ 12:13 am - Filed Under Uncategorized
At last night’s meeting councilman Harper attempted to have the citizens that showed up to support the Citilink resolution speak before council. However, councilman Didier and clerk Kennedy tried to shut it down by saying that it wasn’t a legal public hearing. Harper pointed out that citizens can speak any time as long as the council allows it - legal public hearings are simply those times in which the council must allow citizens to speak.
Didier eventually came around and his argument really seemed to be that there wasn’t any reason to have the public speak since the resolution already had the support of the full council. Harper and Karen Goldner then rightfully pointed out that several citizens had waited nearly two hours to speak and they should be given the opportunity.
Clerk Sandy Kennedy was also opposed to allowing the citizens to speak because they didn’t follow the appropriate process of calling her or Didier before the meeting. She felt it would be unfair to allow these citizens to speak when previous individuals had been turned down for not following the proper procedure.
The quote of the night came from Harper:
I think the least we can do as a council, with the permission of the councilmembers in this committee, is to allow them to be heard. And we can do that in an expedited fashion or we can take another 15 minutes and talk about whether or not we’re going to allow citizens of this town to be heard.
I can understand Didier and Kennedy’s complaint as far as procedure is concerned. Personally I think the procedure needs to be eliminated as most citizens don’t even know it exists. The committee chair should have the right (and I believe they do) to allow anyone to speak they wish. In this case bus riders had shown up to voice their support, several were disabled and users of the Citilink Access service, and yet due to a technicality they were to be turned away? Really? Is that going to promote citizen involvement?
Thankfully common sense prevailed. And just a quick political observation, if you find yourself as a politician trying to choose sides between the disabled citizenry wishing to be heard or the politicians trying to shut them down by pushing bureaucratic procedures - you would be wise to choose the citizenry. That’s my nickel’s worth of free advice for the day.
You can watch the full exchange below:
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2 Responses to “Citizens Allowed to Speak On Citilink Resolution… Eventually (video)”
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Jeez.
Open Government takes a step back and a step forward. After all the attention this year paid by the Council itself to Open Government, how did this discussion ever happen? Thankfully, it was resolved but was it really?
What policy? The City Clerk off and on brings up a policy about calling before the meeting if someone wants to speak. I was curious and found the policy on the City Clerk’s website. But people don’t really know about it, and often one does not decide to make public comments until the meeting itself. It is not a workable policy-most citizens simply do not know about it. And it is not consistently applied. It wasn’t brought up during the Maplecrest Extension discussion when the Chamber’s representative wanted to speak, and was brought up when disabled bus users wanted to speak.
Kudos to those who chose to speak for not being intimidated by their lack of welcome.
The other reason this came up is the mentality that no public input is needed when the Council already has its mind made up. Essentially, that is what President Didier was conveying.
Then why did the Council have the citizens testify on the Smoking Ban earlier when minds were made up? That was when the topic was the economic effect of the ban-not when Councilman Bender was trying to introduce reopening the ordinance for discussion.
The fact is that there are 9 Council members and 250,086 citizens in Fort Wayne (2006 census figure) or roughly 28,000 each. Yes I know that three are at-large, but my point is that citizen input comes from several directions-Partnership meetings, emails, phone calls, letters, comments on blogs, the newspapers, and YES-it is the Public Comment Door Opener afforded by the public bodies. And for some, the citizens simply want to weigh in their support for something or weigh in now for the next time the issue is brought up.
The point is that the public should be ENCOURAGED-not discouraged-since the 9 Council members do not really have a way to hear from all 28,000 on each and every issue. They make judgments based on what they consider the best decision to make, and the more input the better. Then it’s their call.
On any issue, the public should be Encouraged to be involved and voice their opinon. After all, it is government “of the people.”