For Speakers at City Halls, It’s a Matter of Time

About 20 minutes into her discourse on why the Hawthorne City Council should not adopt a proposed ordinance that would impose a five-minute limit on speakers addressing the council, 76-year-old Mary Berks was interrupted by Mayor Betty J. Ainsworth.

“Mrs. Berks, can you wind it up?” Ainsworth asked. “Can you summarize it?”

“Sometimes we have to talk a lot to get our message out,” Berks snapped back.

She then talked for another 20 minutes about her quarrels during the Depression with union organizers she branded as Bolsheviks, the rights of animals and property owners, displaced persons and her ongoing fight against a city ban on front-yard parking.

“I hope that I have opened something up here,” Berks finally concluded. “Remember, whatever you do will come back to you.”

Only one other person spoke briefly against the ordinance, but council members said they had heard from a number of residents, and the message was plain: Most Hawthorne citizens saw the proposed limit as a restriction on their right to address their elected officials.

Council members said they had proposed the limit as a means of speeding up meetings and weeding out long-winded speakers. But Ainsworth said, “It doesn’t matter what our intent was; it’s what the people perceive it to be, and they perceive it to be a limitation on their rights.”

The council voted 3 to 1 against the ordinance, deciding instead to ask at the start of each meeting that speakers limit themselves to five minutes.

The question of whether--or how--to limit speakers addressing city councils is likely to be reviewed in many South Bay cities within the next few weeks because of changes in the Brown Act--the state’s open-meeting law.

Allows Public Discussion

Effective Jan. 1, cities will be required to post agendas of regular city council and city commission meetings 72 hours in advance and will have to allow public discussion on all items on the agenda. Council and commission members will also be prohibited from taking action on items not on the posted agenda, except in an emergency.

Cities now do not have to post agendas and do not have to allow public discussion on most agenda items except for advertised public hearings, although most cities do, according to Conni Barker, an attorney with the League of California Cities, a statewide lobbying and educational organization.

The changes also allow cities to limit the total amount of public discussion on a specific item and to limit the amount of time given to individuals to speak. Also, if public discussion of an item was provided at a council or commission committee meeting, public discussion does not have to be allowed when the item comes before the full council or commission.

Of the 16 South Bay cities, nine already have written rules limiting speakers to three or five minutes, although only Hermosa Beach and Gardena have gone so far as to formalize them by ordinance. The remaining seven South Bay cities leave it up to the mayor, who runs the meeting, to decide how much time to allow a speaker. The city of Los Angeles also does not impose a time limit.

System Works Well

Hermosa Beach Mayor Tony De Bellis thinks his city’s system works well. “There are quite a few people here who are aware of what the laws are,” De Bellis said, “and I think it would be a problem if we didn’t have a limit written into an ordinance.”

In Rolling Hills Estates, by contrast, the council allows unlimited time for public comment. “We’ve never really had a problem,” said City Manager Ray Taylor. “We allow for a reasonable amount of time for testimony and if it starts to become redundant we would cut it off.”

Redondo Beach Mayor Barbara Doerr, whose city has a three-minute limit, says, “Either system works fine. It’s what you have become accustomed to.”

In Redondo Beach, for example, the city has had a limit for the last 10 years. In September, after the number of monthly meetings was reduced from four to two, the amount of time for speakers was set at three minutes. Previously, speakers were allowed five minutes.

Timing Light Used

A traffic light used to enforce the limits changes from green to amber when speakers are down to their last 30 seconds and turns red when their time is up.

“The time light has worked fine for our city,” Doerr said. “But we are continually extending time for people now that it is down to three minutes.” Doerr added that when the limit was five minutes, most speakers were able to state their positions without any extensions.

Redondo Beach in the last few months has also experimented with when the council should hear audience comments. Redondo Beach, like many other South Bay cities, had listened to the public at the conclusion of the agenda. But, in September--after many residents complained that they were forced to wait for hours before speaking--the audience comments were moved to the beginning of the agenda.

City Manager Tim Casey said that change forced people with scheduled items on the agenda to sit through the audience comments. As a result, legal public hearings often ran late into the night.

Moved Back to End

As of last week, audience comments were moved back to the end of the agenda.

“This is a cold, controlled and disinterested council,” said Thomas O’Leary, one of the community activists who has opposed both the reduction in time for speakers and the moving of audience comments to the end of the agenda. “The three-minute limit is clearly intended to discourage audience participation. . . . No citizen should be forced to sit around till midnight to address the City Council.”

Doerr said she sets “a high priority on public comment. (Speakers) deserve every courtesy. It is their government; it is their day in court.”

Lawndale has a five-minute limit, and people wishing to address the council on something that is not on the agenda are asked to fill out cards with their names and addresses and a brief summary of what they want to say.

“Filling out a card seems to force people to think about what they are going to say,” said Paula Cone, Lawndale’s assistant city manager.

Premeeting Sessions

Lawndale has also shortened the length of its council meetings by holding premeeting study sessions--which are open to the public--to clear out minor questions council members may have on agenda items. Cone said this has allowed many of those items to be voted on as a package under the consent calendar.

In Torrance, the South Bay’s largest city, there are no electronic lights to record council votes, no traffic light to cut off speakers, and public comments have seemingly always been welcomed, whether or not an item was being discussed in a required public hearing.

“I don’t believe in putting time limits on,” said Torrance Mayor Katy Geissert. “If a speaker becomes redundant or goes off track then you just have to cut him off.

“People are often frustrated when they come before the council. Their complaints have gone unanswered through the bureaucratic process and they are coming as a last resort. I think it is important that they have that option.”

Former Torrance Mayor Jim Armstrong agrees. “There is just something impersonal to me about an electronic voting machine,” said Armstrong, who stepped down from public office early this year after two four-year terms. “No, let’s not have any limits.”

SPEAKER TIME LIMITS In order to speed up proceedings, many city councils, as a matter of policy, limit the time that individuals are allowed to speak.

City Minutes Allowed Avalon no limit Carson 3 El Segundo 5 Gardena *5 Hawthorne no limit Hermosa Beach *5 Inglewood no limit Lawndale 5 Los Angeles no limit Lomita 5 Manhattan Beach no limit P.V. Estates no limit Rancho P.V. 5 Redondo Beach 3 Rolling Hills 5 R.H. Estates no limit Torrance no limit

*Limit set by city ordinance.