HUNTINGTON BEACH : Council Debates Public Input Time

City Council members this week engaged in a spirited debate on when they should hear public comments during their meetings, eventually voting to maintain a recently passed plan to hear from the public at the end of the agenda.

Council members by a 4-to-3 margin rejected a proposal by Mayor Pro Tem Grace Winchell to return public comments to the beginning of each council meeting. Public comments were among the council’s first order of business until last month, when it voted to hold comments later in their meetings.

Council members now hold scheduled public hearings before allowing residents to address them on other matters.

At Monday’s meeting, two public hearings did not conclude until nearly 11 p.m. Because of the late hour, the only residents who had signed up to speak under public comments declined to do so.

Council proponents of the move contend that a change was needed because public comments at some recent meetings were consuming as much as two hours. They also said they believed residents who turn out for scheduled public hearings should have priority over speakers on general matters.

The decision to move the public comments segment has drawn criticism from some officials and many residents. Opponents say the change is an attempt to quash public input and that it will make it difficult for many senior citizens to address the council.

“I still feel the only way we’re going to hear from the community is to assist them,” Winchell said. “And making them sit through all the public hearings is not assisting them.”

Council members Peter M. Green and Linda Moulton-Patterson were the only other members to support Winchell’s proposal.

Councilman Earle Robitaille, who proposed the idea to move public comments to near the end of meetings, stood by his original position.

“The issue of cutting out input from senior citizens is a red herring thrown out by a few people who are not senior citizens and who (couldn’t) care less about senior citizens,” Robitaille said.

Councilman Jack Kelly agreed that the council should attend to its scheduled business before hearing residents bring up other issues.

“If this puts anybody out of joint, that’s too bad,” Kelly said. “But we have a 13-page agenda here.”

Even dissenting council members agreed something needed to be done to quicken the pace of council meetings.

“We have housewives who come down here with their hair up in rollers,” Green said. “They’ve seen us on (community-access) TV and so they come down here and want to speak. And we can’t have that.”