HUNTINGTON BEACH : Public Input to Be Later at Meetings

At 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, with the audience long since cleared out of a City Council meeting that began 5 1/2 hours earlier, council members quietly voted to place the public comments segment later at future meetings.

By a 4-3 decision, the council agreed to change its meeting format so that public comments will no longer precede scheduled council business.

At the request of Councilman Earle Robitaille, the council decided to go ahead with scheduled public hearings--which often run several hours--before permitting members of the audience to address the council on other subjects.

The move reverses a council decision two years ago that moved public comments near the beginning of council meetings, mainly to accommodate senior citizens who wished to speak to the council.

Robitaille, however, said he believes that members of the audience turning out for a scheduled public hearing should be given precedence over those addressing other topics. He noted that public comments in recent weeks have typically run two hours or more.

“And I think it’s unfair for those who have been notified about a scheduled public hearing to have to wait around for two hours,” Robitaille said.

And this being a City Council election year, Robitaille said he expects the public comment period will continue to consume more time at future meetings.

The move was opposed by Mayor Pro Tem Grace Winchell, Councilman Peter M. Green and Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson. Winchell said that the change would again preclude many senior citizens from addressing the council.

“The truth is, the public that wants to speak to us needs (an early) time they can speak to us,” she said. “And we need to listen to them. It is essential in order to open the government in this city.”

The city’s leading citizens organization, Huntington Beach Tomorrow, which claims to represent 1,000 residents, on Tuesday strongly denounced the format change.

“We think of it as a way to shut up the public,” said David Sullivan, the group’s president.

Sullivan berated the council majority for waiting until the audience had left the meeting before bringing up and adopting a measure that affects public participation.

“Why wasn’t this a (scheduled) agenda item? Apparently, they didn’t want a public hearing on it,” Sullivan said. “Certainly there was no time constraint or emergency involved” necessitating its approval early Tuesday, he said.

“We’re concerned not only about this being done but also the way it was done,” he said.

Additionally, the council near the end of its meeting this week voted to adjourn its future meetings at 11 p.m. That time restriction could be waived at any meeting, however, by a council majority vote.