It took an Americans With Disabilities Act request for accommodation but Cape Coral City Council has moved its time for public comment back to the beginning of its meetings.<\/p>\n
A Cape resident, who is a fully-disabled 81-year-old Vietnam veteran who recently lost his support dog, told the city that he cannot sit through the elected board\u2019s sometimes hours-long sessions due to service-related health issues while waiting for the opportunity to speak.<\/p>\n
He asked to be allowed his time at the podium at the beginning of the meeting where council, until last June, long scheduled Citizens Input.<\/p>\n
After much discussion about options \u2014 and a tangent debate about moving voting meetings from its 4 p.m. start to 9 a.m. \u201clike other elected bodies\u201d \u2014 council moved Citizens Input directly after Recognitions and Achievements, usually about 10-15 minutes into the session and before deliberation of official business begins. <\/p>\n
We thank council for the accommodation not only for the veteran making the request, but for all of the city\u2019s residents who were not only kept waiting, but effectively stripped of their right to weigh in on how their tax dollars are spent.<\/p>\n
Last June, almost a year to the day it had to consider how to comply with ADA mandates, council moved Citizens Input to the end of its voting meetings, placing it in front of Council Reports.<\/p>\n
In doing so, the board specifically deleted a meeting provision that stated that \u201cprior to council addressing items on the consent agenda, citizens may address council only on items listed on the consent agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
The consent agenda is where the city places resolutions concerning expenditures and contracts, sometimes literally millions upon millions of dollars. <\/p>\n
The consent agenda is passed as a whole without any council discussion unless a member of the board \u201cpulls\u201d an item for separate consideration.<\/p>\n
By moving Citizens Input to the end of the meeting, and eliminating the right of the public to speak before council voted on its often voluminous consent agenda, taxpayers lost their right to address expenditures when comment \u2014 in theory, anyway \u2014 might have made a difference.<\/p>\n
Let us share again the truism we espoused last June when council chose to put citizen input last: Public comment after a vote isn\u2019t public comment \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s public protest.<\/p>\n
Moving Citizen Input to better accommodate the public \u2014 and reinstate this opportunity for input \u2014 was long overdue.<\/p>\n
Breeze editorial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took an Americans With Disabilities Act request for accommodation but Cape Coral City Council has moved its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-297209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297209","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=297209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}