Now It’s Easier to Address the Placentia City Council

Those who want to address the Placentia City Council will no longer have to provide their names and addresses and identify whom they represent in writing ahead of time.

The City Council agreed Tuesday night to drop the policy and instead simply require speakers to identify themselves verbally by name and address.

Last September, former Mayor Richard Acton was removed from a City Council meeting after he had refused to submit the required form. Acton said then that the city “was violating my constitutional right to speak and the rights of others.”

On Wednesday, Acton said he saw the change of policy as a “vindication for me.”

“I’m pleased that they finally listened to me. I wish they had done it sooner. I’m still annoyed that they had the police chief escort me out,” said Acton, who served as mayor in 1981 and 1982 but was ousted by a recall in 1982.

The action Tuesday represents the third change since 1980 in city policy governing people who wish to address the council.

In the late 1970s, a city ordinance required people addressing public bodies such as the council to sign an oath swearing that they would tell the truth. Challenged by the Orange County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and at least one council member and several residents, officials dropped that requirement in 1980.

Last April, the city dropped a requirement that anyone wishing to address the council had to submit a letter one week in advance. Dropping the policy was one of Mayor George Ziegler’s first official acts. It had been adopted in 1984 by then-Mayor Richard Buck, who is now a councilman.

Ziegler said he asked his colleagues to make the change Tuesday because “I think the council in 1980 had a problem and they just didn’t solve it. They went part way.”

When Ziegler first moved to change the policy during a meeting in January, however, no one seconded his motion. Two weeks later, the subject was reintroduced and won the support of the council, which made its approval final Tuesday night.

Ziegler said he conducted a survey of Orange County communities and could not find any others that used such forms. At local meetings of the Orange County Division of the League of California Cities, Ziegler said, officials from other municipalities asked “ ‘Why do you have it?’ and I couldn’t come up with a good reason.”

Ziegler said that the rule was intended to help maintain decorum and to aid the city clerk, who records speakers’ names, but that it was not necessary. The incident involving Acton’s removal from the Sept. 3 meeting was not “the trigger” for the changes, Ziegler said, but “it may have given me the opportunity to think about it some.”