The San Marcos City Council rejected a proposal on Tuesday to limit citizen comment at meetings from three minutes to one; however, they will bring back ideas to shorten meetings, which was the stated intent of the proposal.
Mayor Jane Hughson brought the agenda item as a measure to shorten meetings, which have run hours longer than usual in the recent past. Though some council members agreed that meetings need to be shortened, they were in opposition to shortening citizen comment to achieve that goal.
At the meeting, Hughson amended the item to shorten citizen comment from three minutes to two instead of one. She also made clear she was only talking about citizen comment, not public hearings or the question-and-answer portion of the meeting.
“I have stated in public before that I believe that someone can say I’m for or against an item, whatever it is, and give a few points in one minute, and certainly in two,” Hughson said, adding that she would prefer any additional detail be sent in a supplementary email.
Hughson said that by limiting the time for citizen comment, those who speak would do so earlier in the evening and council could discuss and vote on items earlier as well.
“If you’re a person number 100 on the list, at three minutes, you’re going to speak after 11 o’clock. If it was one minute, you would speak before 8. That’s a huge difference. So at two minutes, 9:30,” Hughson said.
Council Member Alyssa Garza said she believes that anything less than three minutes for citizen comment would be a “barrier to participation.”
“I think that we should give our neighbors every opportunity to engage with us more,” she said.
Garza did think a change was necessary, as she doesn’t believe important city decisions should be made at 1 a.m.
“But I think we can get creative,” Garza said. “We could explore special meetings and other options.”
Council Member Amanda Rodriguez said she had a discussion with the mayor the day before the meeting to inquire about her rationale for adding the agenda item. She made clear she did not agree with reducing the amount of time for citizen comment but did want to address the issue of late meetings.
“Our brains do not fire the same when it’s late in the hour. I’ll just be frank. I mean, emotions get higher. It’s not productive conversation,” Rodriguez said. “I am so willing to sit down with you to craft a policy that addresses that so we don’t have to do that. … but I don’t think that the vehicle that currently exists through this item is going to accomplish the intended goal.”
Council Member Lorenzo Gonzalez said that time limits imposed on the public should also be imposed on the council.
“So the 15 to 20 minutes of soliloquies, as some of my colleagues like to give, also extend how long we are here every night,” he said.
Council Member Josh Paselk said he was interested in using best practices for conducting meetings.
“There’s two parts of this: the public facing portion of this, and there’s how we hold and conduct ourselves on the dias,” he said. “Let’s see what … other options we have down the road.”
An agenda item will be brought back at a later date to explore various alternative measures for shortening meetings.
