Title
Consider Providing Direction on a Future Amendment to the Council Meeting Rules of Order to Change Speaking Times for the Public and Councilmembers on Items that are Pulled/Removed from the Consent Calendar. (Councilmember Herrera Spencer)
Body
COUNCIL REFERRAL FORM
The Council can take any of the following actions:
1) Take no action.
2) Refer the matter to staff to schedule as a future City Council agenda item. Concurrence that staff time will be devoted to the item does not signify approval.
3) Take dispositive action only on time sensitive legislative matters if sufficiently noticed such that the public and Council have been provided sufficient information by the published agenda, and no formal published notice of a public hearing is required.
Name of Councilmember(s) requesting referral: Councilmember Herrera Spencer
Date of submission to City Clerk (must be submitted before 5:00 p.m. on the Monday two weeks before the Council meeting requested): May 1, 2023 at 4:51 p.m.
Council Meeting date: May 16, 2023
Brief description of the subject to be printed on the agenda, sufficient to inform the City Council and public of the nature of the referral:
Alameda Citizens Task Force submitted the attached correspondence, dated April 24, 2023, requesting Council consider amending Section 4 of the City Council Rules of Order, which provides:
4. Consent Calendar Items. Agenda items listed under the Consent Calendar are considered routine and will be enacted, approved, or adopted by one motion without discussion. Members of the public can comment once on the entire Consent Calendar. Public comments shall be limited to two (2) minutes or less. Any Councilmember may request removal of a specific item for discussion or explanation. Councilmembers can record a vote other than aye without removing/”pulling” an item from the Consent Calendar. The removed/“pulled” item will be voted on separately. Each Councilmember may ask questions and deliberate for up to five (5) minutes on each item removed/”pulled” from the Consent Calendar.
https://www.alamedaca.gov/Departments/City-Clerk/Key-Documents#section-4 <https://www.alamedaca.gov/Departments/City-Clerk/Key-Documents>
Resolution 15746 was adopted February 16, 2021, just over two years ago, by a split vote of Council with Vice Mayor Daysog and myself opposing. Prior to that, as in for many years, when Councilmembers pulled an item from Consent, it was treated similar to Regular Agenda items in regards to the length of speaking time the public and Councilmembers had to comment.
My request is to revert back to the prior way of addressing Consent items to provide sufficient time for public and Council comments.
Please be aware that only staff and the Mayor have input in preparing the Agenda. Thus, the rest of Council has no input in placing items on Consent vs. the Regular Agenda prior to the Council meeting, and some items are placed on Consent that are not necessarily "routine."
Sometimes, there are many items placed on Consent that the public is interested in speaking about. For example, the Agenda for May 2, 2023, has 12 items on Consent, including Legislative Agenda (5-C), Final Passage of Alameda Landing Ordinance (Bay 37 Pulte Homes) (5-I), and three public hearings (5-J, 5-K, 5-L). So, members of the public under the current rules have only two minutes total to speak to all Consent items (even those pulled from Consent) and thus may have significantly less than two minutes to speak per item because the numerous items, not necessarily "routine," were originally placed on Consent. Under the prior rules, they would have had up to 2-3 minutes to speak per Consent item pulled, similar to other items placed on the Regular Agenda.
Also, members of the public have mistakenly tried to comment on a Consent item after it was pulled by a Councilmember, only to be told they needed to speak at the beginning of the Consent Calendar, before items were pulled and discussed by staff, oftentimes not understanding the item before it was pulled so they did not speak at the beginning.
Thus, in practice, implementation of the modified Section 4 has had a chilling effect on public comment on items pulled from the Consent Calendar.
Thank you for your consideration.
The City Council, at its July 25, 2020 Priority Setting Workshop, established the following 5 priorities for 2021:
1. Preparing Alameda for the future
2. Encouraging economic development across the Island
3. Supporting enhanced livability and quality of life, including addressing the housing crisis and homelessness
4. Protecting core services
5. Ensuring effective and efficient operations
Briefly describe which Council priority the subject falls under and how it relates:
Ensuring effective and efficient operations. It is important that members of the public have sufficient time to comment publicly for effective operations.
Attachment: April 24, 2023 Letter from Alameda Citizens Task Force