At its meeting Tuesday, the Raleigh City Council will consider changes to how it receives public comments.
In a memo to the council, city attorney Karen McDonald outlined ways the council could clarify the purpose of public comments to speakers, revise its process for displaying digital media during public comments, and revise one of its regularly held public comment sessions to start earlier or last for a shorter period of time.
The council currently offers two public comment sessions. One, which the council is considering curtailing in some way, is held at 7 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month, lasts for three hours, and is capped at 165 speakers with a one-minute speaking time (or up to three minutes if there are fewer speakers signed up). The public has an additional hour following the city council’s third Tuesday afternoon session to speak; that session is capped at 50 speakers with a one-minute speaking time (or longer if fewer speakers are signed up).
Members of the public are allowed to display visual media, such as images, slides, and video, which many speakers utilized in the past year to try to urge the council to pass a Gaza ceasefire resolution. Anti-abortion groups and others have also used video to get their messages across during council public comment sessions in the past.
And Raleigh has rules of decorum governing public comments that include mandating advance signup to speak, barring speakers from relinquishing extra time to others, prohibiting personal attacks, threats, insults, and profanity, and prohibiting the audience from disrupting.
At the council’s annual retreat held at the end of last month, council members discussed ways to improve public comment sessions, even after it had made some changes to its protocols last year.
Mayor Janet Cowell said improving communication between the city and the public was one of the most common issues she heard about on the campaign trail.
“I felt a lot of anger from the citizens, that they felt like they had been shut out of city hall, that they were no longer going to sit through hours of public comment, that some of the material being shown was so graphic that they didn’t want to bring their children into the chamber,” Cowell said. “I got a lot of feedback on this, a sense that a lot of people wanted us to relook at this.”
Raleigh is fairly unique among North Carolina municipalities in that it allows speakers to use digital media during their comments, according to city officials. In addition to Raleigh, only two of the 12 largest municipalities in the state allow speakers to do so (Durham and Greensboro).
And there are challenges associated with digital media: technical difficulties can be frustrating to city staff and speakers and there are security risks of introducing harmful material into the city’s system through digital content. Finally, there are legal issues: content that is inappropriate for minors, for example, or incompatible with requirements from other platforms the city uses to stream meetings, such as YouTube.
At the retreat, Deputy City Attorney Dorothy Kibler told the council that there is no requirement under state law that digital media be used during public comment sessions, but if it is used, the council is extremely limited in what it can restrict.
“First Amendment protections are triggered,” Kibler said.
Council member Jonathan Lambert-Melton said there’s a perception, “real or not, that the city council is being distracted by the amount of time we’re spending on public comment and on issues that some folks perceive not to be city-related issues.”
He added that he’s heard from residents who say they aren’t willing to sign up for public comment because, while they may have “a legitimate issue that they need us to hear about … they don’t want to sit through three hours of a meeting, they don’t want to sit through a graphic that they may personally disagree with or may find offensive.”
Lambert-Melton said he wanted to see if the city could find ways to get council members any visual media relevant to residents’ concerns without displaying it publicly. In her memo, the city attorney recommends instructing speakers to submit materials to council members ahead of their speaking times in some way to be determined.
“I feel like public comment is intended for folks to come to us and say, “Here’s a concern I’m having, can you please help me,” Melton said. “And how do we provide space for that?”
Finally, council members at the retreat said they feel the purpose of the public comment periods needs some clarifying—specifically that council members are there to listen to the public, not to respond to them on the spot.
“People are coming to speak … and they’are asking us questions and expecting us to answer, and I don’t think folks understand what our rules of decorum are,” said Mayor Pro Tem Stormie Forte. “They can come and say whatever they want, they can ask whatever questions, but it’s really in the purview of the mayor as to whether she offers a response … or asks the city manager to follow up.”
McDonald’s memo advises either providing additional guidance on public comment on the city website or having the mayor read a statement before public comment periods clarifying the purpose and the council’s role.
The memo also advises revising the second Tuesday evening public comment session to last one hour with up to 50 speakers allowed to comment; implementing an earlier fixed start time, at either 5:30 or 6 p.m.; or holding the public comment meeting directly after its regularly scheduled 4 p.m. work session on that day.
These options, the memo states, would provide predictability to speakers so they could make work or care arrangements and make meetings more efficient “and thus allow Council more opportunities to interact informally with residents outside of the Council meeting setting.”
The memo also says that Raleigh currently exceeds public comment requirements under North Carolina law, and if it adopts all the revisions described in the memo, it will still exceed those legal requirements.
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