The Boulder City Council informally voted on Dec. 12 to reaffirm its rules for responding to public open comment at council meetings, aiming to keep meetings running smoothly and on time following recent disruptions related to the war in Gaza.
Over the past year, public calls for a ceasefire in Gaza during meetings have prompted some councilmembers to respond with remarks on the war or issues of antisemitism, including addressing antisemitic language. At times, these responses have been lengthy or have sparked shouting from the audience, resulting in recesses and meetings running late. Last week’s meeting ran about an hour over schedule, and councilmembers delayed a vote on another city matter in part due to the late hour.
“The challenge we run into is kind of this sense of open mic night,” Councilmember Matt Benjamin said during the Dec. 12 meeting, referring to his colleagues. “I think the status quo is not working.”
To address the issue, a majority of councilmembers agreed to uphold their current rules and procedures for responding to open comments at the end of the meeting, rather than immediately after the public comment, as has been standard practice in recent months. They also plan to revise their rules to limit councilmembers’ responses to two minutes each.
Not all councilmembers supported the changes. Councilmember Taishya Adams suggested simply scheduling time for councilmembers to respond to open comment earlier in the meeting. Similarly, Councilmember Mark Wallach said he supported imposing a time limit on councilmembers’ responses to open comment but was concerned about responding to provocative remarks at the end of a meeting when the room is largely empty.
“We’ve had somebody stand in front of us and deny that the Holocaust existed,” Wallach said. “Would it be appropriate for us to have to wait three hours to respond to something of that nature?”
For more on this issue, see our previous reporting.
It seems like a good idea to move council’s responses to open comment to the end of meetings. Those long-winded responses from council members are too much. Besides chewing up a lot of time, they can spark outrage from speakers and supporters of a Gaza ceasefire since a number of those responses are a direct rebuke to those speakers and there is no opportunity for them to reply. Mark Wallach was adamant about being able to defend himself immediately against rebukes from speakers so he should also understand the outrage they feel when they are denied that opportunity in return. Open comment is a forum for community members to express whatever is relevant to them, not so much for council member to speak at length about their own opinions. Moving comments to the end of the meeting doesn’t feel as satisfying to Mark since the audience is no longer there, but you can’t have everything. Meetings will run better and that should be enough of a win.
This issue needs revisiting as every Council meeting is now being hijacked by these “activists”. The 19 Dec meeting, for example. These handful of people have crossed the line of civility with their antics. Apparently now they’ve doxxed their targets, using pictures of children take from Facebook.
BRL needs to take a look at just who these people are, holding Council hostage (and, by extension, all citizens of Boulder) to their contemptible behavior?