Council adopts new two-minute rule for speakers

Though City Council moved forward with new two-minute time limits, several speakers at Thursday’s Council meeting urged them to adopt a rule giving each speaker three minutes per item, the amount prescribed by Judge Madeleine Connor in April and Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle in May. Prior to the court case brought by the Save Our Springs Alliance and its executive director, Bill Bunch, Mayor Kirk Watson had been allowing speakers only two minutes to address Council regardless of how many items they wished to discuss. With the court order making it clear that speakers should have three minutes per item, meetings have been proceeding a little more slowly.

While the ordinance Council adopted on Thursday states that the presiding officer will announce how much time each speaker is allotted at the beginning of each meeting, it clearly states that “at no time will the speaking time be reduced to less than two minutes per agenda item.” Council Member Alison Alter said she hoped that they would allow speakers addressing budget questions this summer to have three minutes per item.

Alter offered an amendment that would have removed any item from the consent agenda if six or more members of the public had signed up to speak on it. However, her colleagues did not think that was a good idea. Council Member Ryan Alter said such a rule would apply if six people signed up in favor of a particular item. Although Council Member Vanessa Fuentes seconded Alison Alter’s motion to adopt the amendment, neither Fuentes nor anyone else on the dais, except Alison Alter, voted for it.

Alison Alter later abstained on the final vote, with the rest of Council voting in favor of the ordinance, which lays out a variety of rules about Council meetings and work sessions.

Prior to the vote, Bunch was one of the speakers telling Council that they should allow three minutes per item. He also warned Council Member Chito Vela that his proposed amendment would violate the Texas Open Meetings Act. That amendment said, “the presiding officer may also cap the total amount of time a speaker has to address all items on the agenda if the time limit is reasonable.” Vela withdrew the item, but defended it by noting that it followed the reasoning of a Texas attorney general’s opinion. “I just don’t want to get into a situation where there’s essentially a filibuster,” he said, noting that a person could speak for two minutes on 30 different items.

Although work sessions are intended to allow Council to gather information and have some discussion, Council may not vote on any agenda item during those meetings. Bunch complained that Council sometimes veers into deliberation at those meetings and that the public should be allowed to speak when that happens.

Roy Waley of the Sierra Club; Craig Nazor, chair of the Austin Environmental Democrats; Julian Reyes and Brad Massengill all expressed that three minutes would be a more appropriate amount of time for speakers.

Nazor noted that he moved to Austin from a small town on Lake Erie that had become polluted with no one complaining about it. He recalled the famous 1990 all-night meeting that ended with a vote rejecting a massive development that threatened Barton Springs. He urged Council to take more time to listen to the public as they did at that famous meeting.

Waley warned that the public would not want to help out Council members running for reelection if they did not listen to those who wanted to address them.

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