Mayor Pro-tem Herb Katz and Councilman Bob Holbrook filed a lawsuit claiming the length of the meetings violated the Brown Act — preventing the public from participating, since public comment is reserved for the end of the meeting, leaving many without the opportunity to speak their minds until well after midnight on issues not already on the agenda.
The lawsuit also said the long meetings violated the California Occupational Safety and Health Act because they forced employees to work excessively long hours.
Holbrook and Katz were ultimately defeated, however, the lawsuit did spark discussion on how to cut back on the marathon sessions.
The council voted in 2001 to start meetings earlier, at 5:15 p.m., however, that didn’t last very long as many members were unable to get to City Hall in time because of their day jobs. Normally, meetings start around 5:45 p.m., but even then some members show up late because of traffic. The council cannot start without a majority of members present.
To shorten meetings, the council already limits the amount of time members of the public have to speak to two minutes if 15 or more wish to comment on one item, or if 40 or more people are speaking on any combination of items. If there is not that number of people in the audience who wish the speak, than the public is allowed three minutes for each comment.
Some other ideas floated about on Saturday include placing time limits for each item on the agenda and posting those on the city’s Web site, making members of the public more aware of when their item was going to be discussed, rather than having to sit through several hours of debate before their item is called.
“The most control we have is on our own consumption of time and the staff’s consumption of time when giving their reports to the council,” said Councilman Bobby Shriver. “If we had some sort of time limit on each item, I feel that would really force us to be as brief as possible and move the agenda along.”
Genser and Mayor Richard Bloom said they did not feel placing time limits on agenda items was the right way to go, and instead suggested setting time goals.
Shriver had issues with giving the mayor the power to force council members to cut their comments short because of the potential conflicts that could arise between elected officials.
Holbrook said meetings have run late for the last three years because of complex legal issues that council has had to deal with in closed session, such as the Farmers’ Market civil suit, issues with water contamination by oil companies and a fight over the public beach club at 415 Pacific Coast Highway.
“It’s really just been a tough couple of years, but I think some of this is behind us so now we can get back to a more normal closed session,” Holbrook said. “But what I will say is, we should never go back to having closed session at the end of long meetings because it’s hard to make decisions at midnight, hard for our staff to be cognizant and give us good advice.
“It’s difficult and not what we should be doing when dealing with complicated legal matters.”
Instead, Holbrook suggested holding a separate meeting for closed session items, which generally include personnel matters, lawsuits and real estate negotiations.
The only problem is, many council members work in the private sector and have difficulty finding the time for an extra meeting, given the number of special committee and commission meetings they must attend as council liaisons.
Katz suggested encouraging large groups to have one person speak on an item instead of 10, 20 or more — as has been the case in the past.
“We keep getting repetition,” Katz said. Other ideas that will be considered in the coming weeks include putting out motions as early as possible for the council to consider, and making sure elected officials are better prepared and have spoken with city staff ahead of time regarding concerns about a particular agenda item. That way, if a council member wishes to pull an item for discussion so that the public can be made aware of something, then at least city staff would be ready with information to answer any questions the council or public may have.
“I think it will take a combination of things,” Bloom said. “A delicate line must be drawn.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 8, 2007. Read the original PDF.