Franicine Verbarg, of iShuttle video fame, writes:
At the December 8, 2009 council meeting I will be promoting a program loosely structured on a town hall format so as to allow dialogue between the Irvine city leaders and citizens on issues facing the city.
Presently, the only way in which to address the entire city council on matters in question to residents is the public comment arena. However, it does not allow for dialogue. In fact, there are state rules against the council answering questions from the dais.
If you feel the addition of this format would be beneficial to us citizens, I would appreciate your support. If you are unable to attend the meeting but believe this would be a welcome addition to the meetings, I would greatly appreciate your forwarding me a short statement of support. If you wouldn’t mind my reading it at the meeting please include a note to that effect in your response.
I applaud Francine’s effort to make the Irvine city council accountable. I encourage you to support her (I’ll be out of town). I don’t want to publish Francine’s email, so feel free to leave a note in the comments.
Im all for a town hall meeting format, but I think there are a ton of Brown Act regulations that would prevent implementation. Maybe they could have it as a standing agenda item- like a public hearing but on general issues in the city?
There’s nothing in the Brown Act to prevent a town hall meeting of the kind that’s apparently being proposed. For example, the Brown Act states that its rules do not apply to “the attendance of a majority of the members of a legislative
body at an open and publicized meeting organized to address a topic of local community concern by a person or organization other than the local agency, provided that a majority of the members do not discuss among themselves, other than as part of the scheduled program, business of a specific nature that is within the subject matter
jurisdiction of the legislative body of the local agency.” Alternatively the body could host the event as a special meeting, for example, with the purpose stated on the meeting notice as “to hear ideas, proposals and concerns of local residents and offer responses if appropriate,” so long as it was clear that the body would take no collective action on such matters at the meeting.