On Monday, the City of Durham voted to adopt revised rules of procedure to govern conduct in city hall, stirring concerns that public comment procedures were being changed.
The rules of procedure establish basic principles of governance between the city council, city staff, and residents during regular meetings and work sessions. The document answers questions like who assumes the gavel if the mayor and mayor pro tempore are unavailable (the mayor picks) or whether council members who attend a meeting virtually are considered part of quorum (no) or eligible to vote (also no).
Most of the rules are holdovers from previous versions of the document, but some procedures haven’t been enforced as rigorously as others, opening the door for confusion among residents about what the rules actually are. The section regarding “addressing the council” drew particular criticism from residents at Monday’s city council meeting who interpreted the adoption of time limits for speakers at public meetings as a new restriction given the seemingly unlimited public comment that’s been the standard in recent years.
During agenda items and non-zoning public hearings, each speaker is given up to three minutes to speak. They are not allowed to yield their time to another speaker, but groups of speakers can, or may be asked by the mayor or the presiding official to, designate a spokesperson to speak on the group’s behalf—but their time is still limited to three minutes.
For zoning cases, the items that draw the most attention from residents during Monday meetings, the rules of engagement are slightly different.
Proponents and opponents each receive 15 minutes total to say their peace. Again, groups of speakers may designate a team captain to represent their cause, but in this case, the group spokesperson could use more than three minutes to present their side’s argument. The applicant is allowed an extra five minutes for rebuttal following public speakers. Though applicants are in favor of a project by definition, they are not subject to the same pool of time as other residents who are also proponents. Separating the applicant from other proponents is a minor change from the previous rules.
The procedures also give the presiding officer the latitude to further adjust speaking time if there is a high volume of participants. In some cases, that’s resulted in changing the time limit from three minutes to two in an attempt to cycle through more speakers and so the city council can adjourn the meeting at a reasonable hour.
Folks opposed to the procedures adopted Monday said the rules are too limiting and don’t allow enough time for everyone’s voices to be heard on zoning cases, which routinely draw the biggest crowds to city hall.
Pamela Andrews is a Durham resident and member of Preserve Rural Durham, a group of neighbors who are mainstays at city council meetings, often rolling five to 10 deep and equipped with slideshows, videos, paper handouts, and the occasional jar of river water to bolster their presentations. But they aren’t the only ones with opinions, and a 15-minute total cap on time for comment could prevent others from engaging in the process.
“To remove us from having up to three minutes for residents to express their concerns would really be a disservice to Durham,” Andrews said.
Residents coming to speak at a city council meeting are rarely restricted. If 20 people show up in opposition to a zoning case, all 20 people get their three minutes of fame at the podium. Two of those cases in one night (which is not unheard of) and you’re looking at three hours of public comment alone. Last year, the average city council meeting took just under three and a half hours, and I sat through nearly all of them, including a six-hour meeting, which led me to suggest the idea of a group spokesperson as a New Year’s resolution for the city council last December.
What folks perceive as new restrictions were always the rules in place, even if they weren’t enforced.
“The language that we’re referring to was already in the procedures,” Mayor Leonardo Williams said. “What you’re asking for, I’ve actually been honoring.”
The current rules of procedure were first adopted in 1994. Other than a few tweaks, they have remained mostly the same for the past 30 years. In a memo city Attorney Kimberly Rehberg wrote that “the City has grown, the size of the Council has decreased, and technology and the manner in which the public participates has evolved,” and the procedures “have not always remained in alignment with the manner in which the Council actually conducts its meetings.”
City council was forced to confront these procedures head-on early last year when demonstrators flooded city hall to protest the war in Gaza. During a string of meetings, speakers Trojan horsed their concerns about the global conflict through other agenda items like ShotSpotter and the expansion of the HEART program. Meetings were regularly ending close to midnight due to the high volume of speakers and disruptions by demonstrators. The mayor started to enforce the rules of procedure more intentionally, causing confusion amongst folks who had come to expect a different process. Raleigh recently scaled back its own public comment procedure after facing similar challenges with long, contentious meetings and confusion among residents about the rules.
“A lot of the breakdown on council previously was people weren’t following procedures,” council member Javiera Caballero, who is the chair of the city’s Procedures Committee, told the INDY last April. “But also procedures were outdated. And so you can’t criticize somebody for not following procedures when they haven’t been updated and people haven’t been following them, period.”
Residents aren’t the only people subject to a shot clock. The procedures also limit how long council members can hold court during agenda items.
“The first time a Councilmember has the floor on an item, the Councilmember shall limit remarks to not more than five minutes,” the procedures read. “Once a member has made remarks, the Presiding Officer will not recognize them again for debate until other members who have not spoken on the issue, and wish to do so, have held the floor for debate. Once all Councilmembers desiring to comment on a matter have had an initial opportunity to do so, the Presiding Officer may recognize a member for an additional period of not more than three minutes.”
The presiding officer can still make adjustments and judgment calls during meetings, should the opportunity call for flexibility. But folks who attend city council meetings should anticipate closer adherence to the rules of procedure moving forward. Weekday meetings that drag on into the night are themselves prohibitive. Time limits could be necessary, even if they seem punitive.
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