For those of you unfamiliar with public speaking times before the council, here’s how it works:  Every Wednesday council meeting, the public can sign up to speak on any topic in either the morning or afternoon.  There are five slots for the morning and unlimited slots in the afternoon.  If you’re a City Hall regular who’s spoken in the last 30 days, you’re automatically bumped to the afternoon, leaving the morning open to others.

The problem with eliminating morning speakers is that it’s much more convenient for working folks to take off an hour in the morning than spend the whole afternoon with the council, waiting to speak.  See, if you speak in the afternoon, you have to wait til after the council meeting, and that can be two o’clock or 6 o’clock — our schedule is unpredictable.  But if you speak in the morning, you’ll typically speak around 9:30 a.m. and be out before 10:30 a.m.

I strongly oppose this proposed rule change.  We should be making it easier, not more difficult, to speak before the City Council.

I also object to the proposal to require councilmembers to pull a consent item off the agenda by 5pm on Monday before the Wednesday council meeting.  See, we’ve this “consent agenda” where the city manager consolidates what she perceives to be non-controversial items into a single voting group, and we vote up or down on the whole group at once.  Problem is, sometimes there are items that are on the consent agenda that need to be discussed and voted on individually.  Currently, any councilmember can remove an item from the consent agenda until the moment we vote on the consent agenda.  The new proposal would require us to do this two days before.  Or we could get the mayor or the majority of the council to agree to hear the item individually.

The problem with this is two-fold.  First, addendum consent items aren’t delivered to the council until the Friday night before the Wednesday council meeting.  That means a councilmember would only have one day to speak with city staff, talk with constituents, and consult other councilmembers before the proposed deadline.  Since most Mondays are full of council committee meetings, I’m not sure when there’d be time to gather all this intell.

Second, there are times when a constituent comes down to City Hall Wednesday morning and makes a good case for pulling something off the consent agenda.  Maybe the item needs some tweaking, or maybe it needs to be sent back to committee.  Maybe it needs to be denied.  Either way, a councilmember has the right to pull the item from the consent agenda and air those concerns publicly.

Frankly, I’ve too often seen the consent agenda, and especially the addendum consent agenda, used as a means to sneak through controversial items without debate.  So the idea that the authority to allow exceptions would rest solely with the mayor or majority of the council isn’t good enough.  What about controversial items that the mayor or council majority wants to see sail through without debate?

Take these proposed rule changes, for instance.  They were put on the consent addendum, meaning we got them only a few days before we were to vote on them.  Those are pretty significant changes to be presented at the last minute, but that’s what you do if you want to slip something through unchallenged.  Councilmember Vonciel Hill pulled the item off the consent agenda — the day before the vote, something she couldn’t do under the proposed rules — and requested a full council briefing.

Less transparency breeds suspicion and contempt for government.  We need to be making our City Hall more transparent, more open for debate and discussion, not less.  I was pleased to see the Dallas Morning News editorial board weigh in against the proposed rule changes, noting, “Efficiency is a wonderful thing, but in this case, we hope the Dallas City Council won’t let it trump transparency and trust in government.”

But I was just told that their concerns were not aired publicly, and the TV broadcast was cut off when our speakers began. I am not happy.

Last week, I learned from a Dallas Morning News article that “someone” at City Hall had made the decision to shut off our weekly televised council meeting before the afternoon speakers were heard. I have to say, I really don’t like having to read about changes like this in the newspaper instead of hearing about them first-hand at City Hall, but I digress.

Actually, I don’t digress. This is the heart of the problem: Unilateral decisions made without consulting the council or having an open dialog with citizens. When the Mayor wanted to seriously limit the ability of citizens to address the council at our weekly meetings, and slipped this procedural change onto our voting agenda with no briefing, I objected and pulled the item from the agenda. Councilmembers Hill and Rasansky also objected. The matter seemed to have dropped, until I learned (thanks to Dave Levinthal) that “someone” had made the decision not to televise the afternoon speakers.

Don’t get me wrong. About six of the afternoon speakers are regulars who come to City Hall week after week with a particular bone to pick, adding little to the political discourse. Sometimes they are incoherent, sometimes they’re loud, sometimes they’re rude and almost abusive. I certainly don’t like most of what I hear from them — it’s not constructive or productive. But it’s not about whether I “like” a citizen’s commentary. Our job is to listen to the good remarks, the bad remarks, the compliments, the diatribes, the pleas, the censures. Yes, the occasional invective will be thrown in, and we’ll deal with it then, but to try to either limit citizen input or keep them from being heard during a regular meeting broadcast is not acceptable. I asked who was responsible for making this unilateral decision, and the Mayor fessed up. But you see, it’s not his decision, it’s the Council’s decision, and it should be an open discussion. We’re going to discuss this issue in January.

We’re hired by the people of this city to work for them. Part of that job entails listening to them, even when we don’t want to, even if we don’t think they have a lot to say, even when (occasionally) they don’t make a lot of sense.

I strongly oppose Mayor Leppert’s effort to alter the City Council Rules of Procedure to limit the ability of Dallas citizens to address this governmental body. Further, I am deeply troubled by the hasty and surreptitious process by which this matter was placed on the council’s voting agenda.

I first learned of these proposed changes last Thursday when Mayor Leppert came to speak with me about this matter (notably, only six days before the council’s scheduled vote). I did not receive a copy of the proposed alterations until Friday night at 10 p.m. Given the significance of these changes, I find it unacceptable for our Mayor to present this for a council vote with only a few days’ notice to the City Council and the public, without a thorough council briefing, and without a public hearing to receive input from Dallas citizens (considering that the Mayor’s proposal affects the public’s very ability to provide such commentary).

Addressing the City Council is not a privilege granted to citizens by the Mayor or the Council — it is a right. We are elected representatives. We work for the residents of Dallas. To seek to limit the time or otherwise prescribe the ability of our residents to provide comment to this City Council is antithetical to our purpose as a democratic body.

Pursuant to Section 7.11(a) of the City Council Rules of Procedure, I request that Addendum Item #34 be deferred, that the City Council be briefed by City Attorney Tom Perkins and City Secretary Deborah Watkins on this matter, and that a public hearing be held to gather citizen input on the Mayor’s proposed alterations.