Council Meeting Changes
At the February 5, 2024 Organizational Development Standing Committee meeting the City Attorney presented proposed changes to Council’s Rules of Procedure. On February 8, 2024 a resolution was submitted with all Council members patroning it to make the proposed changes. This resolution was introduced at the February 12, 2024 Council meeting and is on the consent agenda for public hearing and adoption at the March 11, 2024 meeting.
Some of the proposed changes are minor tweaks such as:
adding an order of succession for the role of Vice President in the event of a vacancy of the President seat,
changing “citizen” comment to “public” comment,
Staff of Council assigned to a Standing Committee will coordinate presentations and speakers,
if there is no business on a Standing Committee agenda, then it can be cancelled,
and Standing Committee and Informal Meeting presenters must provide enough paper copies of presentations for members.
Other items are intended to streamline the flow of various types of Council Meetings such as:
Standing Committee and Informal Meeting presentations are kept to 15 minutes unless prior written permission from the Committee Chair or President of Council is obtained,
Adding a cap of three per meeting to the presentation of awards, proclamations, and other recognitions,
and instead of reading the introduction of ordinances and resolutions with their Standing Committee referrals during the Council Meeting, they will just present the list to members of Council.
Some changes will improve public transparency and understanding such as:
Instead of reading a motion or amendment in it’s entirety, the Clerk will read a summary of the motion,
and budget ordinances greater than $50,000 will be referred to a Standing Committee.
However, other items will change how Public Comment is run and put new guardrails up on public participation in Council Meetings. Specifically, the changes include:
New language to the public comment sign up where the commentor will not just provide a topic but a “detailed and complete” description that “provides the Clerk with an understanding of which City agency the comments pertain to or affects.”
New language to public comment rules where if someone does not cancel their public comment appearance by noon on the meeting date, they will not be able to participate in public comment for 90 days.
Prohibits signs from being placed on walls and doors of Chambers as well as limits the size of signs to be brought into Council Chambers at 14x11 inches.
At the February 5th Organizational Development Standing Committee Meeting, Council President Nye said the changes have been “a culmination of a lot of things that we have talked about as a Council over maybe the last 6-8 months and then additionally some things our City Attorney has seen in her new role that she has said you don’t have to do that lets just change your rules. So that’s where a lot of this is coming from.” However, it is hard to ignore the timing of these proposed changes, specifically the ones related to public comment. The proposed changes are labeled as January 2024 and being introduced in early February, shortly after the beginning of a large-scale organization effort across multiple organizations in support of a proposed resolution for City Council to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
At the January 8, 2024 Council Meeting, five people signed up for comment on varying topics of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. At this meeting, Council was provided a copy of a proposed resolution crafted by multiple organizations in Richmond. At the January 22, 2024 Council Meeting, 2 people signed up for comment calling for the ceasefire resolution to be passed. Both of these meetings occurred shortly prior to the City Attorney’s presentation in early February with the proposed changes.
The main critiques of this resolution are that it is not within the purview of City Council to make comment on international affairs or that City Council should focus only on local issues. Which, the language change in the public comment section to require speakers to provide a detailed description including what City Agency is impacted by their comment would potentially directly end the organization efforts during Public Comment around the ceasefire resolution.
Of note, City Council has stepped outside of their purview of city affairs in the past to pass an expedited resolution to express the city’s opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. decision, and to ask the General Assembly of Virginia to protect and expand abortion access.
So while it is likely some of these changes have been in the works for 6-8 months as Nye indicated in her comments, it does seem like intentional timing to add new guardrails on public comment right when organizers are beginning to utilize the open public comment period to call on Council to act on what many view to be a controversial issue.
To speak in favor or against the proposed Council changes to rules and procedure, you would want to attend the March 11th meeting of Council that starts at 6PM on the 2nd floor of City Hall and line up when they call for public comment on the consent agenda.