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 last 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.
The city council can prevent someone from speaking if the speaker is being redundant or the governing body already has taken action on the matter, said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association.
“To the extent that a commenter has something to say that isn’t redundant or haven’t taken action on, the Brown Act and the First Amendment allow for that person to speak,” he said.
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.”
Governing bodies can have time limits for speakers, however. Ewert said that if there is a time limit, it must be applied for all speakers. He used the example of giving only two minutes for people speaking negatively against any item and three minutes for those in approval of the item. This example would be against the law.
“The Brow Act does allow (the city council) to impose reasonable time limits for speakers,” he said. Ewert added that the Brown Act does not differentiate between different types of meetings or sessions, meaning that everyone would get a chance to speak if they were at a special meeting, a regular meeting or a study session.
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.
One rule regarding time limits is in Section 2.8.1 that says public comment on an item not on the agenda is limited to three minutes “unless further time is granted by the City Council.” Another rule comes from Section 2.9.2.1 that says the five-minute time limit for comment at a public hearing can be extended “by approval of the City Council.”
However, these rules can be overridden by the mayor in another section of the code. According to the staff report from Monday’s meeting, the presiding officer – the mayor – is authorized to make decisions on interpretation of the rules, points of order or other procedural questions that will be final decisions unless “overridden or suspended by a majority vote of the Council members.”
To prevent errors of speaking rules, council members asked staff to create a uniform procedure for extensions of time limits. It is to prevent internal conflicts in the rules and to determine if the decision to extend time limits will be the final word or if those decisions can be overruled.
Machado said he believes the decision to extend or deny an extension of speaking time should be the mayor’s job.
“It should be at the discretion of the chair,” he said. “To me, a chairman should have that discretion.”
He added there should be a rule to keep people from saying the same things as had been said before.
“You get four or five people coming up and saying the same thing – you can say, ‘focus,'” Machado said. “It is a redundancy and you should ask, ‘Can you say something new?'”
