PORT ANGELES — The City Council has agreed not to limit what the public can say during comment periods at council meetings.
The council voted against changing the rules to prohibit personal attacks on council or staff member in a 5-1 vote on Tuesday.
Mayor Gary Braun offered the sole vote in favor of the resolution. Council member Karen Rogers abstained.
“You guys were all in favor of this at the last meeting,” Braun said.
“I thought it was good then, and I think it is still good.”
The resolution also would have limited public comments to five minutes each, for a total of a 15-minute comment period, though the time limit would have been at the mayor’s discretion.
“I like to keep it simple and not do a list of things that can’t be done, because as soon as you make a list, there is always something else you didn’t think of,” Deputy Mayor Betsy Wharton said.
“If we already have that ability without a specific statement, consider leaving it as it is, and relying on that implied authority.”
On record
In discussion, council members determined that they did not want to pass the resolution, but council member Larry Williams made a motion, seconded by Braun.
“I am making this motion so that there will be a record of the vote, but I do intend on voting against my motion,” Williams said.
Rogers did not say why she abstained, but at the previous council meeting, when she had abstained from a vote to direct City Attorney Bill Bloor to create the resolution., she said, “Because I solely am the one who has been attacked, I prefer not to comment.”
Although she did not specify when she was attacked during public comment, at the Sept. 2 meeting, Port Angeles resident Ed Tuttle called for her resignation based on what he called a conflict of interest between her work as a business consultant and her position on the City Council.
At that time, Williams left the room in protest.
Before the vote on the resolution to limit the comments, Williams first moved to eliminate the comment period altogether. The motion failed for lack of a second.
“I know there is a press to hear the public, and we do hear the public. We meet and greet them in our daily lives,” Williams said.
“We also have opened up a new venue, since all this got started a number of years ago, through Community Conversations,” an informal meeting with two or three council members once a month.
Williams added that he’d like the council to have “town hall” meetings three or four times a year where an exchange between the council and public would be possible.
Because of the other venues, he said, public comment periods at council meetings were not necessary.
Williams voiced concerns that legal action could be threatened against the council if comments had specific restrictions.
Shankar Narayan, legislative director for the Washington State American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter to the council saying he did not believe that a resolution to limit comment would be constitutional.
“The purpose of a comment period is to allow community members to interact with their elected representatives,” Narayan wrote.
“It is an unreasonable restriction of this purpose to declare that certain forms of speech will not be allowed.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
