memo released on May 1<\/a>.<\/p>\nChanges required by state law are intended to increase participation opportunities and reduce barriers related to physical attendance, city staff said, while also necessitating updates to meeting procedures and the order of business of council meetings to ensure compliance and effective implementation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the challenges, oftentimes, for people to participate in City Council meetings is a work schedule,\u201d Deputy City Manager Tyler Bonanno-Curley said during last week\u2019s council meeting. \u201cIt may be hard to get down here even at 5 p.m. if you have to drive down to City Hall, but if you have an opportunity to call in or to participate remotely, that can change public participation opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Based on their analysis, city staffers recommended the council consider changing the regular meeting start time to 4 p.m., as well as move the supplemental agenda publication to Thursday \u2014 from Friday \u2014\u00a0to help with transparency and to give residents more time to know what\u2019s happening at the next meeting, Bonanno-Curley said.<\/p>\n
For public comment, staff recommendations included establishing a single public comment period at the beginning of council meetings \u2013 following the call to order, roll call, pledge of allegiance and ceremonies and presentations.<\/p>\n
Recommendations also included setting a limit on how long each public commenter could speak per meeting; closing speaker sign-ups at the start of the public comment period; requiring speakers to specify which items they want to speak on when they sign up; capping the total public comment period at 90 minutes; and allowing the mayor, as presiding officer, limited discretion to extend time limits or reopen public comment in exceptional circumstances.<\/p>\n
Other cities and governing bodies that have a similar public comment process include Long Beach Unified School District, Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we have hybrid meetings similar to what we had during COVID, there\u2019s a balance that needs to take place in terms of additional participation,\u201d Bonanno-Curley said, \u201cas well as managing the public comment process and making sure people in-person, as well as online or hybrid, have the same opportunity to provide public comment and input.\u201d<\/p>\n
The City Council discussed these changes during last week\u2019s meeting, with suggestions from the elected officials ranging from getting rid of the 90-minute cap on the public comment period, adding another comment period at the end of the meeting, and exploring the idea of transitioning the council into full-time positions, rather than the current part-time seats. The council also said more community input was needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unrealistic to think that we won\u2019t be limiting public comment in some way,\u201d Fifth District Councilmember Megan Kerr said, \u201cbut how are we doing it, in a way that invites as many people who are locally impacted by the work we\u2019re doing, in a way that is realistic for the work getting done, and allows people to feel heard? There\u2019s no easy answer here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Mayor Rex Richardson and the council agreed on directing city staff to have the proposed ordinance include: Having the 90-minute public comment period take place at the beginning of meetings, with the mayor having the discretion to add 30-minute increments if there is high participation; having the 90 minutes split into 30 minutes for general public comment and an hour for agenda items; allowing all residents 90 seconds for their comments; and cutting off signups for public comment by 5:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
The proposed ordinance would also align the city with SB 707, meaning the city would add a method for people to comment virtually.<\/p>\n
The panel also agreed to start the meetings at 4 p.m. and move the supplemental agenda publication to Thursday. Moving up the start time, Richardson said, would allow the city to get all the ceremonial presentations and public comment out of the way \u2014 with people able to speak virtually \u2014 so the meeting starts in earnest around 6 p.m., meaning that people wouldn\u2019t have to rush to make it to City Hall and that the meetings would also end earlier in the evening.<\/p>\n
The council voted 7-1 to direct the city attorney to draft the proposed ordinance. First District Councilmember Mary Zendejas was the lone dissenting vote.<\/p>\n
Zendejas said that, as a disabled woman, she knows how important the implementation of SB 707 is for residents in the disability and senior community. But she did not support the council\u2019s direction and said that more time was needed for community members to share their input on the staff\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very important for us to be able to have that engagement with our community, be able to hear them out,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I do think that one of the most important things about creating policy is when we all work together, meaning city, staff and the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I have a problem with how little time was given to our community when presenting these items,\u201d Zendejas added. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to say that we\u2019re working with the community when even the council just had a little bit of time. I feel that for something this big and this huge of a change in our city and the way our City Council is run, we really need community engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next three to four weeks, however, Long Beach residents, however, will have the opportunity to comment and share their input on the proposed ordinance during upcoming council meetings over the next three to four weeks, City Manager Tom Modica said.<\/p>\n
To go into effect alongside SB 707, the first reading of the draft ordinance needs to be during this week\u2019s meeting. If approved by council, the second reading would happen on June 9 and would go into effect on July 10. The first meeting back from summer recess, with the new order of business changes in effect, would be on July 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The way Long Beach City Council meetings are structured could potentially change \u2013 particularly when and how long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,23,131,133,132,137],"class_list":["post-321774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-local-news","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}