By JOHN E. SETTLE JR.
The advent of ZOOM council meetings has birthed a new phenomenon.
Citizens desiring to make public comments to the council can email them to the council clerk office. In other words, comments can be sent from anywhere with a cell phone or computer. No need to come down to Government Plaza and speak in the council chambers.
And with social media, it’s easy for advocates of a certain position to send templates to be followed by others who desire to assert the position.
Thus, citizens’ comments parroting the same political position have exploded in volume. Many of the comments sound as if authored by the same person, with just a different name and email address.
Repetitiveness is really not that helpful. The Caddo Commission rules of procedure limit comments for one position to be limited to a total of 15 minutes. So those FOR a vote have a total of 15 minutes to make comments, and those AGAINST a vote have a total of 15 minutes.
The council should consider making this change in their rules of procedure. With email comments, the practice should be to read into the record the emails received in order of delivery, with a total of 15 minutes for each position. Council members can be advised of the total number of emails espousing a certain vote.
Additionally, the council should consider a change in procedure on ordinances and resolutions that the sponsor has decided to pull from the agenda. In other words, if controversial issue is NOT to be considered by the council, there is NO need to read into the record emailed comments on that issue.
These can be provided to council members for their information. There is no need to put these on the public record. In the alternative, these can be read at the end of the meeting as a non-agenda item.
Recent council meetings have been bogged down by the reading of emailed comments for over an hour — generally for 75 to 90 minutes. The real business of the council is too often delayed unnecessarily.
The very lengthy council meetings with extended reading of citizen comments discourage citizen viewing of the meetings. The average citizen does not want to tune in for almost four hours of talking to understand key votes by the council.
How much longer ZOOM council meetings will continue is unknown. However, change in the practice of reading ALL citizen comments by email should be implemented at the next council meeting .
The practice of having the vice-chair read the emailed comments into the record should be discontinued.
An employee of the council clerk’s office would not have any predisposition on a topic that would influence how the comments were read into the record as far as voice inflection or word emphasis.
THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE June 26 ISSUE OF FOCUS SB - THE INQUISITOR.