Palm Springs City Council trying to streamline meetings
Palm Springs City Council meetings have been known to go from 6 p.m. to sometimes past 1 a.m., leaving some people in the dark for decisions on important issues.
On Wednesday night, the City Council started to take steps to streamline the process of getting through council meetings while still giving people time to make public comment.
The City Council did not vote on making any changes, but did send more recommendations back down to committee for consideration before being brought in front of the council at a later date.
The council has decided it might be better to limit proclamations and presentations at the beginning of meetings. The council would then be able to get to the business of the city after the Pledge of Allegiance.
“Proclamations can happen at the actual events where we are giving them instead of at the City Council meeting, and presentations can happen in other places,” said Councilmember Geoff Kors.
The City Council did send recommendations back to committee to allow two presentations a meeting. Those presentations should only last three minutes a piece.
Some council members also want to change how people give public comment.
Currently, there’s a time during the meeting where people can give three minutes of comment on any issue. Then, for certain items, a person could give another three minutes of public comment on a specific item on the agenda once the council gets to that point in the meeting.
“We really want to hear from the people that have gone home. They are long gone, because they couldn’t stay until 11 p.m., which is when sometimes our first official business item is coming up for discussion,” said Councilmember J.R. Roberts.
The idea going forward would be to give people two minutes at the beginning of the meeting to talk about anything on the agenda.
Then the council will give people a chance to talk for two minutes at the end of the meeting to talk about anything topic the person wants.
“If we shuffle the way we do our public speaking, we can actually give our public more time to speak if we break it into different groups,” said Roberts.
Some opponents of the changes contend that changing the time limits people can talk could violate the Brown Act.
“My understanding is that the Brown Act does not specify times or has specific speaking times. It specifies that we let people speak to specific items,” said Roberts.
Another benefit to the change would be for city staff. According to Kors, some staff members start work at 7 in the morning. These changes would hopefully stop them from having to work a 17 hour day every other week.
The council decided to send more recommendations to the Ad Hoc committee headed up by Roberts and Kors. The council agreed to keep Color Guard presentations for only the first meeting of the month. The council also asked for new public comment cards to be made so the council would know the subject a member of the public is going to cover in their comment.
The Palm Springs City Council meets one Wednesdays every two weeks.
