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Democracy and general public comment: A reply to Jon Li

Brett_LeeI want to thank Jon Li for his thoughtful response to my earlier article, an article that objected to the recent proposal to limit the time for general public comment at the beginning of Council meetings, shunting the rest of general public comment to the end of the meetings.  His remarks provide the opportunity for me to reflect more on the nature of democracy as it pertains to our humble town.

 Jon asks us to think about the real purpose of public comment and about the nature of a representative democracy, and rightly so.  It is my view that recent events, both regionally and nationally, have shown us that just showing up to the polls and voting during elections is not enough.  Citizens can and should be more engaged than that.  Of course, ultimately we do rely on our elected representatives to make decisions.  But it is incumbent on us to let them know where we stand on issues, to raise concerns that they may not have thought of, to give them the information that they need in order to be able to properly represent us.

And I think that maybe Jon and I agree more than he is letting on.  He points to the recent Davis Downtown "participatory design workshop" where “the city's high paid outside consultants mouthed what the city staff told them to say for three hours and fifty minutes, and the public was allowed to speak for ten minutes.”  I don’t for a minute think Jon believes that that was a desirable situation, and neither do I.  So, all the more reason to urge the Council not to change current Council practice.  Bad practice in one instance cannot justify bad practice in another.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that general public comment has “disrupted” Council meetings.  It has caused some meetings to go on long, to be sure.  But those were situations where there was an issue that many citizens were passionate about.  Perhaps those were not issues that you or I were passionate about.  Again, though, I think that’s part of a democracy, which can be a messy process.  Sometimes, when an issue is important enough, I think that not only do we have the right to make ourselves heard – I think we are obligated to speak up.  Putting up an additional barrier to general public comment reduces Davisite’s ability to fully engage and address the issues that face our City and its citizens.

It is true that Davisites can submit written comments to Council, but one benefit of general public comment is that we all get to hear the comments.  We learn from each other about issues and concerns we might not have thought about.  And because they are public, the Council is put on the spot to respond; if they don’t respond at all, then that is noteworthy too. 

Again, I do realize that the proposal is not to eliminate general public comment entirely.  But I will reiterate what I said in my previous article: the burden of making people wait until the end of the meeting to speak is too high, and it would be better to shorten meetings by limiting presentations by commercial entities and staff who have already included the fuller information in the publicly available Council packets.  I call on the City Council not to shunt general public comment to the end of the meeting.

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Roberta Millstein

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Comments

3 responses to “Democracy and general public comment: A reply to Jon Li”

  1. Nancy Price

    Participatory democracy at the community level is the cornerstone of our democracy. Let’s not erode it further. Alternative opinions and new “real” facts and information are important for all parties to hear. I am always amazed at what the public adds to the item under discussion that is not covered by staff or individual City Council members who do not have the time or interest or expertise.
    The practice of having 1, 2or 3 minute comments has worked well and efficiently and might be further refined by asking all those in support of a position to stand to be counted and encouraging those who would add to the discussion to speak.

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  2. Eileen Samitz

    I agree with this thoughtful article in defense of retaining adequate time for public comment. The entire point of building the Community Chambers was to allow a forum for the public to bring their concerns to the Council directly. Since the Council has reduced their number of meeting from weekly to now only twice a month, that alone already has cut the opportunity for public comment by 50%. So, to try to reduce the public comment time allocation by even more is not only unfair, but not in the best interest of Davis residents.
    The real problem that exists now at the Council meetings is that too much is being crammed into half the number of meetings, since Council meetings historically were weekly meetings. So, the real solution is for the Council to restore the weekly City Council meetings. Then there would more ample time to cover the many issues before the Council, and would allow the time needed that community should have the opportunity to give input.
    The suggestion for less public comment time could not be made at a worse time given that the City is dealing with so many important and controversial issues, including major planning for the future of our City, including any updates to our General Plan.
    It is imperative that the City not restrict public comment in any way, and if anything, the City Council needs to consider going back to weekly meetings to allow ample time to review and discuss the important issues before them, while also allowing critical input from the Davis community.

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  3. Jon Li

    Nora Oldwin has many good points about neighborhood associations on the thread on politics in nextdoor.com. In 1993, I helped organize the first meeting of the Davis Community Network, of which nextdoor.com is a recent manifestation example of face-to-face and Internet community building. In 1996 in the City Governance Task Force, Kevin Wolf and I invented the city idea for neighborhood associations. There are now 125 identified neighborhoods which participate in the annual Davis Neighbors Night Out in October. The city does a rotten job of communication. I want the city this October to facilitate letting people identify neighborhood, community and citywide concerns, then the next Sunday have 11 community meetings, and then the next Sunday have a citywide Community Congress. I believe we will create the momentum to draft a city charter. It is called “Home Rule” in the California State Constitution.

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