Evansville Common Council Considers Procedures on Public Input at Council meetings

On Tuesday night, the Evansville Common Council considered adoption of Ordinance #2006-9 that would amend the municipal code relating to rules of procedure for common council meetings. In the current practice, there is an item at the beginning of each meeting titled "Citizen Appearances other than agenda items. " Few citizens appear and speak on this agenda item, and if they choose to, Atty. Mark Kopp explained that the council members really play a listening role since the matters that are brought up are not ready for debate as such since there has been no notice to the public that these matters will be discussed. In the spirit of the "Open Meeting law" council members listen but do not engage in debate.

Then, once in the agenda items, if there is not a scheduled public hearing on the agenda, the public CANNOT speak UNLESS the chair recognizes them to do so. The process of recognizing citizens for questions occurs at the committee level such as Water and Light, or Finance, or the Redevelopment Authority. These are smaller meetings usually, and the questions happen quickly in the agenda items and do not interfere with the flow of the meeting; However, alderman expressed concern that in a larger setting without specific time limits there would in fact be a public hearing about every item on the agenda and the result would be very long, long meetings.

Mayor Decker indicated her support for questions and answers in the agenda item rather than before the agenda began. The Council voted to return the proposed ordinance to the committee level for language revision on how long each person could speak etc. This matter will reappear on the June Council Agenda.

Click on the Audioblogger for the audio of the first 15 minutes of this discussion.