> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Sugar fix Lawsuit looming over late council meetings - URL: https://www.smdp.com/sugar-fix-lawsuit-looming-over-late-council-meetings/ - Published: 2002-01-28T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T23:59:01.000Z - Author: Carolyn Sackariason - Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import *‘Tired’ city councilman may be a plaintiff* A group of citizens plan to sue the Santa Monica City Council, arguing the public doesn’t have fair access to council meetings because they run into the wee hours of the morning. Local attorney Rosario Perry confirmed Friday that he is enlisting a group of plaintiffs to force the council to wrap up the public’s business before midnight. “We are going to file a lawsuit against the city and ask a judge to prohibit them from going beyond 11 p.m.,” he said. “Our theory is that the Brown Act requires that public meetings should be open and accessible. Right now, people can’t participate because the meetings are so late... People have to work.” One of the plaintiffs in the suit may be none other than Santa Monica City Councilman Bob Holbrook, who is constantly frustrated at the length of time it takes to get through the city’s aggressive agenda. As a pharmacist at the University of Southern California, he has to get up early for work and needs more than four hours of sleep, which is all he’d get if he stayed until the end of most council meetings. “We are deliberately scheduling meetings that the public can’t be part of,” he said. “The public has a fundamental right to be there.” More often than not, the council votes to go past the city’s deadline of 11 p.m. And by majority vote, the council usually ends up discussing the public’s business until as late as 3 a.m. As a result, citizens give up and go home, as well as some council members. “I feel horrible about leaving,” Holbrook said. “I didn’t know that I was signing up for serving from midnight to dawn... I think the court has to rule that we can’t go past midnight. “If nothing else, it certainly violates the spirit of the Brown Act,” Holbrook continued. “I would like to stand in front of a judge and tell him that I am a city councilman and I have to work like most people and we can’t participate at the meetings.” Last week’s meeting may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. The agenda was packed with two large and controversial development proposals — the Virginia Avenue Park expansion and the civic center redevelopment plan. The civic center plan was presented at 1 a.m. but the public hearing was continued to Feb. 5. At the Jan. 22 meeting, the council heard four hours of public testimony on the Virginia Park issue and there were nearly 150 people waiting to speak on the civic center plan. Santa Monica resident Tom Larmore was one of them. He waited for about three hours before he realized he wasn’t going to be heard. So like the others, he went home frustrated. “People get discouraged from even going down there,” he said. “They need to do something about this because it deprives the public from participating. “They need some sort of restriction placed on them because they can’t seem to discipline themselves,” Larmore continued. “The perception is that they are hiding something, whether it’s true or not.” Perry has no doubt that’s the reason the meetings run late. “They do it on purpose,” he said, adding the intention of the Brown Act is to make sure public business is reasonably accessible to citizens. Santa Monica Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown said the city’s process is a victim of its own success because the council is so adamant that people express their opinions. He pointed out that other governing bodies, like the Los Angeles City Council, don’t take public comment. “Our strength is listening and that’s the cost of the choice we make. It’s not like we are saying, ‘Hot damn, we get to stay here until 3 a.m.,’” McKeown said. “Of course it deters public participation but it’s because we try so hard to let them speak that the meetings go so long.” That’s why there should be more of them, argues Councilman Ken Genser. The long, drawn-out meetings have been an issue for years. Elected officials have recently debated how often they should meet. “I have been saying we should have more meetings,” Genser said. “Our agendas are too ambitious... I’ve expressed my concern to the mayor.” It’s up to the city manager, the mayor and the mayor pro tem to set the agenda. But putting less on the agenda would require more meetings, which takes more staff time and more commitment from elected officials, said McKeown. “We tried going to once a week but we burned out our staff and us,” he said. “The staff has to do reports every week and we wouldn’t have time to think long term.” Councilman Richard Bloom agrees that more meetings would require more of staff’s time. And he agrees it’s the price to pay in giving people an opportunity to be heard. But in the interest of true public participation, it may be time to re-examine the issue, he added. “If the amount of business continues, we may have to look at going to once a week,” Bloom said. “It’s definitely something we need to address... The visibility of an open government is compromised when we do it at 1, 2 o’clock in the morning.” Perry, the attorney building the case against the city, said working city staff into the early morning hours may be another argument in the lawsuit. “This is partly on behalf of the employees who are required to be there and it might be that (the city council) is violating labor practices,” he said. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 28, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/012802.pdf?ref=smdp.com)