Public comment is under siege

David W. Gordon

It is not clear from Alfred Aboulsaad’s (“Some council regulars waste

valuable time,” May 14-15) diatribe against Carolyn Berlin’s defense

of freedom of speech before our City Council if he is aware of, or

familiar with, the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Preeminent in the Bill of Rights, it states, among other things that,

“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, ...

or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the

Government for a redress of grievances.”

These protections extend to speech that may be repetitive or in

the form of complaints. Aboulsaad’s statement that, “... people who

actually care about the city and have relevant issues before the City

Council are drowned out by the steady stream of regulars ... “ is

patently false. If he ever actually cared enough to come down to City

Hall during a council meeting, he could observe firsthand that each

speaker is afforded an opportunity to address their concerns. No one

is drowned out. However, oftentimes an individual’s public comment

may be squelched by the acting mayor, should the speaker happen to

stray from the “approved” topics.

The only people whose voice will be silenced with the council’s

new rules will be those who actually have relevant city issues that

do not neatly fit into the ruling council’s agenda of what is worth

listening to or considering. Certainly, the council is not interested

in permitting criticism or any factual information to surface that

may cast them in a bad light. Nevertheless, those in power will still

find ways to permit their friends, supporters or themselves to

generously expend time for self-adulation or lauding city staff

members. Squelching dissent never advances democracy, but shackles

it. In fact, it is a favored approach in dictatorships that feign

democracy. It seems Aboulsaad is likewise unaware of Thomas

Jefferson’s admonition that, “freedom of speech cannot be limited

without being lost.”

Aboulsaad implies that the reason candidate Michael Bergfeld lost

his recent bid for a seat on the council was that “Burbank residents

summarily dismissed ... close-minded views.” Once again, Aboulsaad is

off base with the facts. Bergfeld’s campaign was based on maintaining

Burbank’s traditional residential communities, stopping unbridled

overdevelopment, minimizing traffic congestion and battling airport

expansion through intelligent planning and the law. During the

election, then three-term incumbent David Golonski was forced into a

runoff election when he was unable to get enough votes to retain his

seat in the primary. More than 5,000 voters cast their ballots for

Bergfeld, rejecting Golonski’s double dealing and doubletalk about

airport expansion, overdevelopment and horrendous traffic impacts,

much of which occurred under his watch. Only through a protracted and

very hard-fought runoff election, pulling out all the advantages of

incumbency, name recognition and out-of-state campaign financing did

Golonski retain his seat. Golonski won, but not “summarily,” as

suggested. The victory margin amounted to 412 votes, representing

less than 1% of registered voters. Hardly a mandate. Hardly a summary

dismissal of Bergfeld’s candidacy. And guess who is now leading the

charge to choke off public oral communications? You guessed it, Dave

Golonski!

Make no mistake about it, the public’s right to address its

elected officials, comment on matters of city business and raise

other relevant issues of community concern are all under siege. All

of Burbank’s residents, especially Aboulsaad, would be well served by

noting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s 1928 pronouncement

that “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments

by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

* DAVID W. GORDON is a resident of Burbank and former member of

the Planning Board.