Bickering Council to Review Rules Guiding Meetings

They may not vote with, agree with or even remotely like each other.

But as the political rift between Thousand Oaks City Council factions widens amid accusations and recall drives, council members Tuesday will discuss ways they can at least work together.

The council will conduct a workshop to review its “standards of operation,” the procedural guidelines that govern council meetings. Each year, council members have a chance to fine-tune the rules, making changes they hope will produce smoother, more efficient meetings.

In past workshops, council members have often disagreed on what steps would work. This time, with relations between the council’s factions poisoned by efforts to yank three council members from office, solutions may be hard to find.

Councilman Andy Fox, a subject of one recall threat, said no procedural changes could improve meetings that he said have become an embarrassment.

“You can’t legislate common courtesy,” he said.

Council members must treat each other in a more businesslike fashion and refrain from the emotional outbursts that have punctuated past meetings, Fox said.

The council’s current rules already reflect as much.

The guidelines to be reviewed Tuesday state, “Respect for each individual council member’s interpersonal style will be a standard of operation. Courtesy and sensitivity to individual points of view will be a standard of operation.”

All that remains, Fox said, is for council members to follow those standards.

“It isn’t a question of olive branches,” he said. “The standards are there, the rules are there, and either you follow them or you don’t.”

Newly elected Councilwoman Linda Parks, however, said the council could work on paying a little more respect to individual points of view. The atmosphere on the dais, she said, would improve if council members were given more time to air their views and discuss them in detail with colleagues.

That, of course, would countermand the focus of last year’s standards workshop: finding ways to speed up council discussion and shorten meetings, which often staggered on past midnight. Parks acknowledged the need to keep meetings moving forward but said the council has become too zealous in curtailing discussion and would benefit from some give-and-take.

“We can carry on conversations in the hallway--we should be able to have conversations in the meeting,” she said.

Parks also wants to make council meetings more open to members of the public who want to comment on city business. Current standards limit speakers to two minutes each if more than 15 members of the public wish to address the council.

“[We should] be a little more lenient in letting people speak,” Parks said. “We should encourage that.”