The Missoula City Council on Wednesday opted to move public comment back to the front of the meeting, allotting 20 minutes for speakers to address issues not on the evening's agenda.
Keeping the “reports from the public” to 20 minutes still ensures that official city business can be addressed earlier in the evening unlike past years, when public comment sometimes lasted for more than an hour, delaying issues before the city.
“This will just provide a brief opportunity for some residents to provide public comment at the beginning of the meeting without having a public comment period going for two hours before we go into actual noticed agenda items,” said the measure's primary sponsor, Sandra Vasecka.
Reports from the public will last 20 minutes, with three minutes per speaker. The rule change allows one comment per person per meeting, regardless of whether it's early in the meeting or later. Once the 20-minute window closes, the city will move on to official business.
Comment will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis.
“We don't want staff waiting all night for an unknown amount of public participation,” said co-sponsor Bob Campbell. “But this appears to be a reasonable combination to allow public comment from the get-go. The time period proposed is not an unreasonable ask of staff, of the media, or anybody else here to conduct regular business.”
The City Council moved public comment to the end of the meeting roughly one year ago to ensure that city business was addressed at the front of the meeting. Before that change, public comment sometimes lasted for hours. It saw people reading chapters from the “Communist Manifesto” each week. Others came to berate members of the public and public officials, or spread false information.
Comment was never denied after the change; it just required those wishing to address the city to wait until official business was finished.
“The City Council meeting is a business meeting of the council with noticed agenda items,” said council member Amber Sherrill. “It made sense and does make sense to make sure the people here – the staff that we pay to be in the meetings – got their presentations done first. But I'm comfortable with this change. It's a reasonable way to move forward.”
Some members of the public comment each week and sometimes several times each meeting. With the changes adopted on Wednesday, those individuals and other members of the public will have a 20-minute window at the front of the meeting to speak their mind.
If they wish to address an agenda item, they will have to wait until the item comes up in the meeting. That rule remains the same. Limiting comment to 20 minutes won unanimous support, but it will be tested to see if it works. If not, the City Council could revert to its original rule, placing public comment at the end of the meeting.
“We have to be fiscally responsible and ensure we're not paying overtime for our staff to be here for an unknown amount of time,” said council member Mirtha Becerra.
The changes should allow local media to meet their deadlines as well, others noted. In the past, late meetings pushed coverage into the next day's news cycle.
“There's some competing values here,” said council member Gwen Jones. “I have concerns, but I'll vote for it. It's 20 minutes. It's capped instead of an hour or an hour-and-a-half of public comment. We'll have to see how it works.”
