HOLLISTER
Hollister officials are trying to clear up potential conflicts in the city code’s rules for public comment, and the city manager noted how one section that caps the total speaking time at study sessions to 15 minutes “might not be legal.”
Council members this week directed staff to adjust the rules for public speaking time limits at meetings by creating a uniform policy and establishing who will have the final say on extension of time limits.
“The main things were the speaker time and the enforcement of the time,” City Manager Clint Quilter said. “The direction (the council gave) is to have the mayor or the redevelopment agency chair be the judge on time limits.”
He added there also will be an item in the new, proposed rules about the council’s ability to override them if members deem it a necessity.
Hollister Airport Commission Member Gordon Machado said he thinks this item may have come up because of his actions at the previous council meeting. He said he was addressing the council on the Cal Fire lease – as a private citizen – and Mayor Eugenia Sanchez tried to cut him off before he was finished. Machado had researched the lease more than eight hours.
“I studied for hours on Cal Fire’s lease, for probably eight hours, and you’re going to give me three minutes to say what I learned in eight hours,” Machado said.
He added that later in the RDA portion of the meeting, Hollister resident Marvin Jones was cut off during his speaking time because of Machado’s situation.
Though there are rules regarding time limits, there is no uniform procedure to extend the time limits beyond three minutes. The rules come from the Hollister City Council’s Policies, Rules and Procedures that was adopted in 2004 and amended in 2008.
Quilter also noted how staff in the update probably will get rid of a rule limiting the total public speaking time at a study session to 15 minutes. He said it “might not be legal.”
The rule, according to the staff report, says that public comment at a study session is limited to three minutes per person and a total of 15 minutes. If enough people attend, it could deny some citizens from speaking.
For an expanded version of this story, see Tuesday’s edition of the Free Lance.
