Akron City Council leadership is proposing changes to the rules governing the public comment period in its meetings, where residents, sometimes angry, passionate or emphatic, address the elected body. The rules would also limit what council attendees can bring into council chambers.
In recent weeks, dozens of community members have flocked to council chambers every Monday night to, among other issues, passionately request the passage of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Council President Margo Sommerville and Vice President Jeff Fusco introduced legislation that would:
- Limit public comment to only 10 people per week
- Limit those who speak to one meeting every 30 days
- Ban signs, posters and flags from council chambers
- Move the council meeting’s start time a half hour earlier to 6:30 p.m. and move the public comment from the end of the meeting to the beginning
The resolution is currently under further discussion in council’s Rules Committee.
Signal Akron’s Doug Brown talked with Council President Sommerville about the proposed changes.
The conversation has been edited lightly for clarity.
What led to proposing these changes to public comment?
We always have been looking at ways we can improve the public comment period. One, to make them more efficient, more meaningful, and more professional. We’ve had a lot of issues with decorum over the past year and so we’ve been thinking about different ways and opportunities to address some of those issues. We think that the proposal that is before council does that.
One thing that it does do is it gives constituents an opportunity to speak first. We’re talking about changing our meeting time from 7:00 to 6:30, so at 6:30 the public comment period will be the first thing on our agenda, which would give constituents an opportunity to address council before any official vote is taken.
Is it incorrect for me to presume these changes are in response to the Israel-Palestine commenters?
(Editor’s note: About 25 public commenters addressed council at each of its Monday meetings the last several weeks. Many were speaking in support of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. Sommerville called for order several times during the Nov. 13 meeting.)
Oh no, it’s not just about the recent commenters. No, no, no. You can go back and look at some of the other meetings. We’ve had White Pond – a lot of issues where it has drawn a lot of people to council and has drawn a lot of constituents with a desire to speak in front of council.
It’s not just what you see recently. It’s not just based on what you’re seeing right now. It’s really based upon the past year, where you’ve had a lot of challenges maintaining decorum with the public comment period.
Editor’s note: Last December, Akron City Council approved the controversial sale of 29 acres of city-owned property off White Pond Drive in West Akron for a residential and retail development. Residents near the property were concerned construction would disrupt the ecosystems of a nearby wetland and possibly impact endangered species thought to be living there.
One of the things that caught my attention was that it would be limited to 10 people max, and then you can only speak once every 30 days. It seems like if this goes through, council is only going to get a very limited perspective of what the community is feeling.
Not really. When you look at average, and not what’s been happening over the course of the past few weeks, on average we get maybe 10, maybe not even 10 people that want to speak before council. That’s on average.
Of course, when there are certain hot topics or certain issues that are happening in and around the city, that draws a lot of attention. We get a lot more people in the chamber, but on average we might not even have 10 people speaking before council.
But on these divisive, controversial topics, aren’t you necessarily limiting the perspectives you hear?
One thing I do want to say that is really true about the city that we live in, which is a great thing, is that constituents have so much access, direct access to their representatives. So if there is an issue that’s happening, you’re able to pick up the phone and call your ward council person, your at-large representative, you can email them. We’re holding monthly ward meetings in the community. Constituents can still participate and come to City Council meetings and talk with us after the meetings, as we do all the time.
It’s really important to know our elected officials are very easily accessible and there are so many different ways in which constituents can and do communicate with us. And it’s not just about public comment period. You’re meeting with constituents every day and all day, through phones and email, and coming out to community meetings.
Going back to limiting the number of people who can speak, how would the 10 people be selected? Would it be first come, first served? Would it be random?
The idea is that the first 10 people who submitted their public comment forms would be the individuals who would be able to speak. We looked at what other cities are doing in terms of their public comment period. This model that we’re looking at is what Cleveland is doing now, although they’re getting ready to look at things and make some changes again.
Is there any context you feel I’m missing based on my line of questioning?
The piece about limiting it to 10 people and the other piece where individuals would have the opportunity to speak once every 30 days – again, these are ideas that we’re kind of throwing out there to get council’s feedback, get the public’s feedback.
The idea is if we’re going to limit it to 10 people, we want to make sure that anyone who wants an opportunity to address council, that they can do that and it’s not just the same 10 people who are appearing before council every single week.
We want to make sure that the public comment period is more meaningful so that people are speaking directly on issues that are on our agenda, things that we’re talking about right now, that they get an opportunity to talk before council before some of those decisions are made.
That’s what we do want to encourage people [to do] when they come to public comment. They can talk about anything of course, but we’re really wanting them to address us and talk to us about items on the agenda – things that we’re talking about right now. We want to hear from them prior to any major decisions or votes. We want to make sure that their voices have been heard.
At the end, this is something that council is going to take their time on. We’re going to continue to look at it and take feedback just to look at how we can make our meetings be more meaningful, more efficient, and more productive.
