The three-commissioner majority bloc at Tallahassee\u2019s City Hall has voted to limit unagendaed public speaker time to 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
It comes after Mayor John Dailey adjourned the commission\u2019s last meeting early as protestors held up signs and criticized commissioners for their stance on the city\u2019s agreement with immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
Under new rules passed by the commission, groups coming to speak on the same unagendaed issue will now have to designate one speaker. The 30-minute limit allows just 10 speakers total during each meeting.<\/p>\n
City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow voted against the motion, calling in unfair and undemocratic. He said he thinks community members deserve to be heard.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, we cut the amount of meetings we had in half. At the same time, this city asked for a pay increase for city commissioners, and now we’re saying we’re going to hear from the public not twice a month, but once a month, and we’re only going to allow 30 minutes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox supports the change. She said she hopes it will bring back decorum that she thinks is missing from city commission meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we’re just grandstanding, or you want to be on television or whatever, whatever it is, when people look at our meetings, I’m embarrassed when they walk up to me and ask me, What are y’all doing? Our children are watching this and wondering what is going on in city government,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The majority of recent protestors have criticized actions or stances taken by the three commissioners who voted for the new rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The three-commissioner majority bloc at Tallahassee\u2019s City Hall has voted to limit unagendaed public speaker time to 30…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-160586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-tallahassee","9":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","10":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}