It was Tuesday night and there was yet another over-packed council agenda. There again Mayor Ruth Asmundson was trying to hasten the pace, but instead of doing this by limited the number of items on the agenda or sending the item back to staff to re-work, she simply attempted to cut off debate.
As per the usual, she applied this standard unevenly shutting down Councilmember Sue Greenwald, only to have Councilmember Lamar Heystek offer his lengthy comments which led to everyone else offering their thoughts. The irony is that by the time she tried to impose discipline, the cat was already out of the bag, the council had spent over two hours negotiating and wordsmithing and development agreement they had already approved just three months before.
When people complain about the length of time that council meetings take, when they complain about the fact that at times, key decisions that are supposed to be made in the public light, are instead made in the wee hours of the morning by weary councilmembers who probably and rightly are exhausted and only want to go home. And yet for the years I have covered the council, this is the way we have done business.
It does not have to be this way. The sad thing is that while we talk about limiting discussions and deliberations, the answers have less to do with that than proper meeting and agenda management.
The first solution would be to eliminate public presentations at regular council meetings. How often are lengthy council meetings begun with a presentation and awards ceremony that take 30 minutes, followed by a break for refreshments. At times, that eats as much as 45 minutes of prime council meeting time. And toward what end? We give people the recognition they deserve. However, we could do that more efficiently if we had a separate meeting once a month to acknowledge community work, they could assemble for an hour or two, have refreshments and then the public and the council could go home.
But while that is a consistent source of annoyance to people who attempt to cover council meetings or attend them, that is not the meat and potatoes of the problem. The biggest problem is that we simply try to do too much in a given meeting.
People are by now aware that the council spent several hours on a land use issue prior to even beginning the Wildhorse Ranch discussion. The land use issue before was not a priority issue, there was no time deadline, the Wildhorse Ranch discussion was scheduled first on the agenda and should have been given priority. But that is not the only problem area.
How about the lengthy public meeting in January of 2009 when the issue of Palestine-Israeli conflict came up, the council then did regular business before finally hearing a report on the fire department’s grand jury report after midnight.
The fact of the matter is that while sometimes an item will sneak up on the council and city staff, most of the time, we have a good idea which will be long items and which will be relatively quick. Unfortunately, what has often occurred is that multiple lengthy items are placed on the same agenda. This leads to either items being postponed or being taken up late in the night.
Any land use item is going to take two to three hours to deal with. There are complexities. Some of this could be avoided, but we should not be scheduling other critical items behind land use items.
Commonsense suggests that we could spread out time consuming items so that we have agendas with fewer items on them, shorter in length, but we have more meetings.
However, one of the problems is that often we have had traveling councilmembers, particularly the Mayor. So this Tuesday there is no meeting despite having a packed calendar last week and next week. Why is that? Well Mayor Asmundson not only scheduled travel to a sister city, she left last meeting early and canceled this week’s meeting.
That leads me to a question, have we simply allowed too much of this pageantry during a time of economic crisis overwhelm business that we should be undertaking. We have councilmembers who go abroad and get thrown elaborate parties and wined and dined. It is a tremendous embarrassment of riches that most people if they were aware would not approve of.
We have seen complaints about public expenses in traveling to some events, and apparently the council is cutting back on some of that, but when we are taking junkets to foreign countries on behalf of a city, that seems to be crossing the line. We are not talking about public money here, but we are talking about officials traveling using our name to their own personal gratification or so it might seem.
For me, I would do the following. First, make a monthly presentation meeting which is ceremonial only with no city business. Second, limit the agenda as much as possible to one major item for week. Third, anticipate time deadlines so we do not get stacked up agendas where all the items are time sensitive. Fourth, meet every week. Fifth, no August break at least until the economy has turned around.
I think once we do that, we do not need to worry as much about limiting time for discussion. Also, the current format discourages give and take by councilmembers. Each member asks their questions. Each member gives comments. At no point is there a true discussion. At no point is there the opportunity to perhaps compromise and hash out an agreement on the public stage.
As a result, we cannot prove it, but we suspect that there are a lot of deal making behind the scenes and we suspect it involves more than two councilmembers. We cannot prove this, but one way to discourage it is to allow the council to more fully discuss items in public.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“Democracy is the worst form of government…except for all the others.”
Winston Churchill
No doubt a competent mayor (which we can only hope will come soon) could organize the process better but the democratic process is often painful to watch. I hope and expect we will have a more civil and organized council someday soon.
But don’t expect miracles.
Eliminating ceremonial items has been proposed before, by me. But it was rejected on the indisputable premise that this is one thing the Council can do and all feel good about. That does not mean we should set aside such matters to a special meeting, that will be attended by the recipients’ friends and neighbors.
Debating national and international issues, for which no city council in the land has meaningful impact, is a complete waste of time. They cause much controversy, attract very zealous proponents and opponents, who have the ability to speak for an hour without taking a breath.
Meanwhile, real substantive issues under the direct influence and control of local government are ignored or subject to long delays. Several times in past years there have been appeals to stop this waste of time and energy, but it has been shouted down on the baseless argument of stifling of freedom of speech.
Trying to get an ego-driven politicians to restrain themselves when a microphone is in front of them is a daunting task. If we impose a time constraint on public speakers (as we should) we need to impose a similar constraint on council members. They drone on and on and rarely say anything of value. Just once I’d like to hear a council member say, “I agree,” to a just completed discussion that they support, and then shut up.
Advocates have the false notion that 20 speakers saying the same thing in a public forum is better than one person. In fact, it dilutes the quality of the argument with its mind numbing repetition. If there were a way to curb that gigantic time waster, council meetings would adjourn at 9:30pm or earlier every evening. We can only hope.
In my opinion Ruth isn’t qualified to run a council meeting. It will be so much better when she’s gone.
I agree with Mr. Coleman.
Three of my pet peeves are as follows;
1. The Public Comment period, where citizens get to voice their opinions, has been scapegoated by some on the City Council as the culprit for meetings running too long. Very rarely are citizens the cause of too much time being taken on any particular issue. Too much time being taken up is almost always because of the discussion by City Council members at the dais, trying to micromanage things they know nothing about/have no expertise in to the point of absurdity.
2. The City Council members are often unprepared because they are not given staff reports until right before the meeting, instead of in sufficient time to read the materials, and ask questions prior to the City Council meeting.
3. The City Council wastes time discussing issues outside its purview, such as peace intiatives, what is going on in the Middle East, etc. ad nauseum. These issues are not being discussed in the appropriate venue. The City Council should stick to the business of the city, period. That is what they were elected for.
I agree with all of your suggestions. I would add one more. I would change the method by which the mayor is selected. For most of Davis’s history, the mayor was chosen by the council itself. I think that is a superior system. If the council picks someone who is not good at running meetings or often has to leave town on other business or is out of step with the majority on policy issues, the council could choose one of the other members to become the mayor. The appointment does not have to be for two full years. It should only be for as long as the mayor has the support of a majority of the council, for as long as they believe the person in the mayor’s chair is the person best suited among them for that task.
In 1918, the council picked Gordon Anderson to be our town’s third mayor. Mr. Anderson was excellent at running the meetings. So good at it in fact that his colleagues reappointed him to the job every year until he retired from the council in 1931. Anderson was replaced by Calvin Covell, who actually had preceded Anderson as mayor. Mr. Covell was also good at the job. His colleagues backed him in that post for the next 17 years until he retired from the council.
It’s very unlikely that we will ever again have a mayor who holds that job for stretches like Anderson and Covell did, if we changed back to letting the council pick the mayor. But if we do end up with someone in that post who is good at it, who runs meetings well and has the support of the others, the city would be well served by keeping that person as mayor. Heck, mayors like that get major streets or gyms on campus* named after them.
*Vern Hickey was the mayor of Davis for 6 years in the 1950s. He was the longest serving mayor since Covell.
“The City Council should stick to the business of the city, period. That is what they were elected for.”
Exactly, if they want to make judgements on national issues then run for a Federal position. I don’t remember hearing any council members tell us how they felt about the war, Arizona or any other national issues before they were elected. Stick to the local agenda.
It is extremely naive to take the position that policies and politics at state and national levels do not condition the “business of the city” and “local agenda” that the City Council members have before them. I for one, would be delighted to have City Council candidates make clear where they stand on a military budget that robs cities and counties of state and Federal funding for public services; where they stand on free trade vs. fair trade agreements that protect labor, public health and the environment since trade policies, in fact, do impact Davis, but most people have little understanding of why; or,how the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v FEC of January now allows unlimited corporate money in election campaigns, even for judges, will impact local and state elections in ways that will impact Davis. Much more could be said about this as Davis doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
It’s extremely naive to think that any declaration our city council ever makes will have any affect on the outcome of national policies. In the meantime look at all the time wasted on those futile issues when there are far more pressing local problems they could be attending to. Either way I don’t want my council speaking for me on Federal issues when they never ran on those issues to begin with.
It’s not supposed to necessarily have an affect on the outcome of national policies in most cases. What it is supposed to do is allow the closest government to the people, the local municipal government, represent the voice of the people of Davis, in aggregate. Does it have any impact on policies, not generally, although in aggregate, who knows. But then again, your vote doesn’t have any impact either at least not individually, but you still vote.
I strongly agree with rusty49 (12:21 pm).
I don’t need to have “City Council candidates make clear where they stand on a military budget” or on anything else which is not about the business of the City of Davis. They are free to express their views as individuals about any topic they like. Just don’t use up the public’s time on non-germane subjects, like they did when they spent an hour debating whether the U.S. ought to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
What I find interesting is that when there are very obvious actions of the state government–which are directly harming the interests of the City of Davis–our council almost always stays silent on those issues. They would rather blow-hard on nuclear weapons than on municipal finance.
How is it that not one of our city council members has ever addressed the pending question in Sacramento regarding municipal bankruptcy, a terrible bill which was co-authored by Mariko Yamada? Darrell Steinberg kicked Lois Wolk off the Local Government Committee in the State Senate because Lois stood up for Davis and other cities. The California League of Cities has fought desperately to defeat Yamada’s bill. (The firefighters, who wrote the actual bill, have more friends in the legislature than the cities have.) Yet our city council has never once spoken out against this horrible legislation which will harm the City of Davis and all other cities?
“What it is supposed to do is allow the closest government to the people, the local municipal government, represent the voice of the people of Davis, in aggregate.”
So David, how is the council representing the voice of the people of Davis when they never let their national and world views be known during any phase of the election. I don’t remember in any of your question and answer sessions you asking how the candidates felt about Israel, Iran, Obama, Afganistan, Prop. 8, abortion…………………………..
That’s the logic of it. However, increasingly I believe there are simply better uses of time than focuses particularly on national/ international issues. At least state issues probably have a direct impact on council and city functions.
The value of the Council discussing these non-local issues from the dais is that they usually reflect what can best be described as “Davis values” which can recede from citizen consciousness unless periodically publicly brought forward for consideration. These “values” are what makes Davis Davis.
DMG: “The value of the Council discussing these non-local issues from the dais is that they usually reflect what can best be described as “Davis values” which can recede from citizen consciousness unless periodically publicly brought forward for consideration. These “values” are what makes Davis Davis.”
I elect City Council members to address city issues. I elect U.S. Congresspersons to address national issues. City Council members campaign on city issues, should stick to city issues, and have no particular expertise except on city issues. Once you open the barn door, and allow City Council members to start weighing in on national issues, the horse is off to the races – the race to address national issues at the expense of local issues. The City Council agendas are packed as it is – and there is not enough time to address local issues, let alone national issues. Addressing national issues also allows City Council members to avoid the discomfort of grappling with local issues.
Also, what are “Davis values”? That is a rather subjectively vague term…
“Also, what are “Davis values”? That is a rather subjectively vague term…”
“Davis values” are whatever council edict that davisite2, David and the rest of the liberals here happen to agree with. The council’s okay to rule on any national issue as long as it fits their politics.