Those tuning into tonight’s Council Meeting may have seen that I voted three times against suspending rules that safeguard the passage of legislation. Those rules call for two “hearings” before a vote can be taken on Resolutions, and the Council was short-circuiting that to one. For anyone who may be interested further on why, I’ve provided the below.

Big picture:

  • Ultimately, our City belongs to the people. And rules around our City’s legislative process are put in place to ensure that all residents: (a) are allowed adequate notice about what’s going on in their city, and (b) are provided adequate time to reach out to their representatives to share their thoughts and have those integrated into the decision-making process.
  • Especially when situations impose new requirements on citizens, or when there’s a material commitment being made by the City, these changes are required to have two (2) “hearings” – This means that the agenda item has to appear in two separate meetings and the public provided two separate opportunities to comment, propose changes, disagree, support, etc.
  • Occasionally, an emergency or other compelling circumstance may arise where the legislature may consider suspending the rules to avoid adverse impacts that might otherwise occur. To accomplish, a majority of the body must vote in favor to ‘suspend the rules’.
  • Absent those types of scenarios, in my opinion, a legislature should not invoke suspension powers out of respect for the prerogative of the people.

Particular to tonight’s agenda:

  • I learned 2-3 hours before the meeting that Council would be considering suspending the required two-hearing rule for the four Resolutions on the agenda.
  • The circumstance cited was that our normal Second Meeting of the month had been cancelled (and not rescheduled), since it fell on the Monday of Christmas week.
  • In my judgment, our resident’s rights aren’t any less in December simply because Council opts to cancel its second meeting.
  • In the short time left before the meeting, I was able to confirm from our legal counsel that there would be no adverse impact to taking up the affected Resolutions at our next scheduled Regular Meeting on January 13 as normally required. Two of the Resolutions related to the DROP program, and it was very important to me that Police and City employees rights were protected.
  • The DROP program is the Deferred Retirement Option Plan and it was being considered for extension for four years. The final bits of the program had just been shared with me over the weekend, and I was in the process of digesting the information, hearing others’ thoughts, and arriving at a vote decision.

In my opinion, the safeguards around the passage of legislation exist for a reason, and that is to ensure the people have their voice. To me, even if many times no one is present in the room, we always need keep them forefront in our mind and protect their space for whenever it is needed.

I like to think of it like the old Motel 6 commercial, grounded in good hospitality: “We’ll keep the light on for you.” To me, when we short-circuit the rules, we usurp the power that is the people’s. And absent a sufficiently compelling reason, we’ve sacrificed for convenience’s sake the very trust we purport to uphold.