Bob Yates is a regular opinion columnist for Boulder Reporting Lab. He is a former member of the Boulder City Council. A version of this piece was also published in the July issue of the Boulder Bulletin, his newsletter about local government and the community, which he has written since 2016.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Boulder City Council has been besieged by people demanding that the council take a position on the conflict in Gaza.
Those demanding action on Gaza often participate in the “open comment” session at the beginning of each regular city council meeting, where speakers can take two minutes to tell council what’s on their minds. Open comment is meant to be a forum for a diversity of views. But over the last 18 months, speakers with an opinion on Gaza have dominated open comment, vigorously and repeatedly insisting that city council pass a resolution on the conflict in the Middle East.
In response, on Feb. 15, 2024, city council voted to refrain from taking a position on the Israel-Hamas conflict. With that decision, they wisely followed a decades-old rule that prohibits council from weighing in on an international matter unless it directly affects the city.
Despite that clear decision more than a year ago, protesters have continued to flood open comment sessions, demanding that council reverse itself and wade into the Middle East conflict. Their demands have grown increasingly offensive, with several speakers — some of whom don’t live in Boulder — loudly calling councilmembers Nazis, child-killers, genocidal and worse. Often, they direct their wrath at two councilmembers who are Jewish.
Some speakers don’t limit their demands to two-minute open comment speeches, with protesters chanting, screaming, cursing and waving flags in council chambers after open comment ends, sometimes disrupting council business well into the evening. At several meetings, councilmembers have been forced to flee from their dais into the comparative safety of an adjoining break room, leaving police officers to clear council chambers. Boulder Reporting Lab reported that council has recessed 19 times due to these disturbances, sometimes multiple times in the same meeting.
The unprecedented interruptions of council proceedings are under renewed scrutiny following the June 1 attack in which a man from Colorado Springs set a group of elderly Jewish residents on fire in front of the Boulder County Courthouse, a few hundred yards from council chambers. Thirteen people were injured, some severely burned. One of them died. These are our friends and neighbors.
Enough. Open comment must be suspended.
Having sat through 200 open comment sessions during my eight years on city council (2015-23), I can tell you that this portion of the meeting serves a very limited purpose. Open comment is reserved for those matters that are not on council’s agenda that night, with significant council decisions subject to separate public hearings.
In the past, open comment speakers presented on a diversity of topics, including homelessness, housing, transportation and the budget. But since the Gaza conflict, many people who would like to speak at open comment about city priorities have opted out, due to fear of the protesters in council chambers, who dominate the meeting.
City council has tied itself in knots trying to come up with ways to eliminate offensive statements and disruptive behavior during and after open comment: Rules of decorum have been announced. Violators have been banned. Signs have been prohibited. Cameras and microphones have been turned off. Councilmembers have walked out of the room. None of it seems to work.
At their meeting on June 26, councilmembers considered no fewer than 13 open comment reforms. But the changes council agreed to that night were largely cosmetic, like starting the council meeting a half-hour earlier and keeping TV cameras off during open comment.
Here’s a solution that city council hasn’t seriously discussed: Suspend open comment. Start with six months. Then, if the bad behavior returns when the suspension ends, suspend it again. That may sound extreme. But council fleeing its own chambers, unable to complete its work, is extreme too.
There is no First Amendment right to speak at a city council meeting. Many Colorado cities don’t have open comment sessions, instead encouraging residents to raise issues with their city councils by email. Open comment is a privilege, not a right. In Boulder, that privilege has been abused by a few, ruining it for the rest. That’s a shame. But it makes no sense to allow protesters to harass underpaid councilmembers, intimidate other speakers and delay the administration of municipal government. Or to incite violence.
The Boulder City Council is losing control of its meetings. Six armed police officers are now deployed at council meetings to protect council, city staff and community members. Council members have asked for metal detectors at the doors. What have we come to?
Over the past year and a half, open comment has devolved from somewhat irrelevant to offensive to dangerous. It’s time for a pause, for the safety of our community and those who serve it, allowing council to get back to the business of the city.
Let others fix the Middle East. Here in Boulder, let’s fix the potholes.
Well we know where you stand!
Agree to disagree.
With all due respect to Mr. Yates, I’m sorry, but while I agree with most of what Mr. Yates calls for, his one point about metal detectors I strongly disagree with. Metal detectors should have been deployed at the doors to the municipal building years ago. What have we come to? We’ve come to the era where too many people have ready access to powerful firearms, overexposure to brain-melting disinformation, and spend too much time on anger-inducing social media.
It is far too easy for someone with malicious intent to waltz straight into chambers with a weapon. The fact that the city continues to stall a decision on this commonsense 21st century security measure puts everyone in the municipal building at risk.
It is long past time for the city to install commonsense protective screening measures for people entering the municipal building that help protect not only council, but staff, other boards that hold meetings in chambers, and also the audience members. Let’s not wait for another tragedy to unfold before we just do the right thing, and install the kinds of security screening stations for visitors that we already see at the capitol and elsewhere around the state.
Andrew, regrettably you may be right that metal detectors are now needed at the Tate Municipal Building, where the Boulder City Council meets twice a month. But I do still think we should ask ourselves, “What have we come to?” when we have to install and staff security measures at the very place where our representatives gather to do the community’s business. – Bob
Right.
It doesn’t need to be all or nothing. They can go back to all virtual comments and if the commenter violates the topics allowed then they are simply mic-muted and they move on to the next commenter.
Yes, they could try that. But the “topics allowed” is the problem. Under the First Amendment, once a government body provides a forum for the public to speak, the government can’t limit the content of that speech. So, as long as the Boulder City Council hosts Open Comment, they have to more or less permit people to say what they want. I’m advocating for a breather, to allow tensions to decrease. – Bob
Yah ‘Keep”, So simple, WHO DECIDES if the topic is relevant? Every possible issue is relevant to Boulder’s economic solvancy from this expensive Gaza war, especially the town’s fav, climate change and every department dependent on money.
All comments should be submitted by email. However, there should be a period on camera where council members respond to all emailed comments.
Erik, that’s a great idea. When I was on council (2015-23), we received about 18,000 emails a year, or an average of about 50 a day. So, while having council members respond to all of those emails (or even to read them) would be a wonderful thing, having nine council members take time at a weekly council meeting to react to the more than 300 emails they received that week is probably not feasible. But maybe each council member could take one or two recent emails they’d like to respond to and say something at the council meeting. It might be worth a try. – Bob
They must respond to you Erik, they’ve never responded to me in 38 years of experience! And, more importantly, who in this community is going to read the e-mails?
I could not disagree more.
The behavior tolerated *for 18 months* at city council would not be tolerated more than once, if that, in other settings with other people — with children of any age (let alone adults), at home, at any place of employment, in businesses.
This citizen, among others, has addressed council over the past year’s time regarding aspects of mitigating and deterring the wildfire risk posed by human ignition on our urban-adjacent upwind backdrops. In addition to face-to-face meetings, addressing council as a body in chambers, entering comments into the public record in this setting, is a valuable and core aspect of governance and citizenship.
The disruptive agitators are an indescribably small percentage of our population. Are we to let not even the tail, but a hair on the end of the tail, wag our democratic dog?
Code section 5-5-18 Suspension of Facility Privileges designates the city manager as the person with the authority to discipline people who violate codes while in city facilities. The manager’s (and council’s) permissive incrementalism is beyond misguided. Code allows a 1 year suspension, and at this point (actually well before), that should be applied to any infraction no matter how momentary.
(Note: one late winter 2025 session when I spoke, I counted 10-12 police officers downstairs in addition to the two stationed upstairs…at whatever cost…)
Yes, Bart, I imagine that city council and the city manager are now regretting that tighter controls were not implemented earlier. It’s too bad that it’s come to this. -Bob
City council could simply cut ties with Israel and condemn the genocide. That seems like an easy decision to me.
I agree with Bob last sentence of the writing. Our city Council is there for Boulder issues..
Shutting down the “open comment” session seems like a drastic solution to the problem. Is it not practical to simply forbid comments on topics irrelevant to the BCC’s jurisdiction, Gaza in particular? If a person violates this policy, simply have them physically removed by the armed officers Yates references in his column and charge them with disrupting city council proceedings. Don’t let the agitators suppress the voices of those who can respectfully present their views on topics relevant to the mission of the City Council.
Eric, that would seem like a good solution. But I believe that the First Amendment protects the right of people to say anything they would like to the government, once the government provides a forum for speaking. So, I believe that a rule that prohibits people from speaking at Open Comment about topics irrelevant (whose decision?) to council’s jurisdiction or about Gaza in particular would draw a pretty swift, and likely successful, lawsuit. I think that council faces a binary choice: Keep Open Comment and let people say what they want, or end Open Comment. Thanks for reading and weighing in. – Bob
Let’s not lose sight of the main issue here. The children of Gaza are the ones being besieged.
I have been following these issues for decades and I have very little power of the situation. I would do literally anything I could to ease this situation no matter how big or how small. The council on the other hand has power it can use in the form of divestment. They have actively chosen not to use that power.
What we are seeing is classic punching down by our city “leaders.” If you are going to imply that there is somehow a connection between the interruptions and the attack then present the evidence otherwise it’s a preposterous insinuation.
The bigger issue here in my mind is what the truly powerful outside forces will do if the counsel did decide to divest. I believe that the Republicans and corporatists Democrats are far more worried about that than a few persistent disruptors.
Dear Mr. Yates – I agree with you that something has to change, but strongly disagree with what that change should be. Public comment on issues the Council chooses to ignore is one of the only mechanisms citizens have to communicate with the CC and know that concern will be heard. Many of us long time residents in Boulder feel the CC has completely lost touch with what the majority of us want and instead focus on serving developers and ideology. So I am strongly against taking away our forum to speak our minds and be heard.
That all said, the pointless and violent protests must stop. They have taken over the public comments portion of the meeting and driven away average citizens with meaningful concerns. I submit to you that instead of ending them altogether, the CC set up a way to receive 2 minute video comments and play them during the comment portion of the meeting. The CC can choose to skip comments that are related to the war and respond to others if they choose.
This would protect our communication channel with CC while also protecting the CC from the protestors that have chosen to embrace disrespect and violence.
Lee: Pre-recording and playing some, but not all, videos is an interesting approach. I’m not sure who would screen and decide which videos to play. And I don’t know if showing only some of the videos would present a First Amendment problem. Maybe not. But having served on council for eight years (2015-23), I’m guessing that many council members would watch only those videos that are actually played at the council meeting, not all of those received. It’s hard enough for a $12,000-a-year, part-time council member to read all 18,000 emails they receive each year (some don’t). Watching videos that are rejected for showing at the council meeting probably wouldn’t be high on their list of things to do.