Why Should Delaware Care?
Holding a public comment period at government meetings is required by Delaware law. It also is an important opportunity for members of the public to express their thoughts and concerns to elected officials. The Dover City Council has been criticized for having its public comment sessions before the official start of its meetings, and government transparency experts say the city is falling short of best practices.
Dover officials will consider changing their city council meeting structure after drawing criticism over how they hear comments from the public.
The public comment period, when residents can speak for up to three minutes about concerns not related to a specific item on that meeting’s agenda, is held before the meeting officially starts. The council calls it an “open forum,” and it is scheduled for just 15 minutes before the official start of the council meeting.
The open forum also is not included in the livestream of the meeting, nor is it a part of the video recording published online afterward.
City council members stand by the current public comment structure as the best way to balance hearing constituents’ concerns with getting through the set agenda items for the meeting. Policy experts, however, say the approach does not meet best practices for making government meetings accessible to the public.
“If [the public] wants to express what they want to in front of an audience, there has to be certain limitations,” City Council President Fred Neil said.
Despite his defense of the procedure, Neil appointed an ad hoc committee to examine the structure of the public comment part of the meeting. Different suggestions have been thrown out as to how the open forum might be adjusted, including adding a second public comment period at the end of the meeting, Neil said.
Potential changes to the open forum policy will be discussed at the city’s Committee of the Whole meeting on Oct. 28.
Dover’s open forum
Delaware is one of a minority of states that requires local governments to make time for public comment during their meetings.
The law says that public meetings in Delaware must provide a “meaningful opportunity for the public to engage with the public body.” It also states that the public body may impose “reasonable” restrictions on the time, place and length of public comment within meetings.
While the Dover City Council’s open forum is not officially part of the meeting, Neil said he believes it meets the state law because the forum is publicized with the rest of the meeting agenda seven days prior to the meeting, and because the council sometimes allows additional public comment on specific agenda items during the meeting.
Neil added that council members will also delay the start of the official meeting and let the public comment continue longer than scheduled if there are more members of the public present than usual.
In particular, he pointed to a number of council meetings this summer that drew a large turnout to discuss safety and gun violence in the community following a homicide in June.
Though a summary of the public comment period is included in the meeting minutes, or the written record of what happens during a meeting, Dover resident William Faust said the open forum should be filmed and posted online afterward.
“They don’t want the citizens to see the controversy, the fears, the anger out there,” Faust told Spotlight Delaware. “I think more people are starting to get aware of what’s going on, and people are getting frustrated.”
Faust said he also has complained to council members that meeting minutes do not represent the full detail of what is stated during public comment, and that the open forum should be considered part of the official meeting that is filmed and posted online afterward.
When asked about Faust’s concern, Neil did not have a direct response.
He did, however, say he does not view residents as being limited to just the 15 minute public comment period. They also can express their concerns to elected officials through a variety of other means, he said, including writing letters and emails or by holding their own town halls.
He said the public comment period must be balanced with getting through other items on the council agenda, like zoning ordinances or proclamations of holidays.
“What is important is not what somebody’s opinion is, but what business is taking place that is going to affect people in terms of ordinances or money being spent,” he said.
Faust added that some residents have started livestreaming the public comment period on Facebook, or posting video recordings of it online, to make it more accessible to others who cannot attend.
Experts weigh in
Dave Cuillier, a professor who studies public access to government at the University of Florida, said Dover’s open forum policy may not break Delaware’s open meeting laws in the strictest sense, but the structure does not allow for much public accessibility to the council.
“They should follow the intent of the law – and that is to provide the public maximum amount of input and participation in the process,” Cuillier said.
Moreover, it is fairly common for municipalities to create hoops for the public to jump through to be able to participate in their meetings, such as holding the meetings at odd times of the day, or making public comment before the official start of the meeting, said Bert Johnson, a professor at Middlebury College who studies local government.
To Johnson, the way city government officials treat residents who show up to meetings and give public comments can be an important signal to the rest of the public about whether the council members take the public seriously.
“The many savvy elected officials who I know will go out of their way to treat even those very annoying people with civility and courtesy because they know they’re not just talking to them, they’re talking to everybody [in the public],” Johnson said.
Neil expressed concern that the high number of residents who turned out to city council meetings over the summer could turn into a “mob” if they are not closely monitored.
“They were getting really out of control,” he said.
Neil did not, however, describe any specific incidents of violence that have taken place at recent council meetings.
Examining safety and structure
In response to his concerns about the summer city council meetings, Neil appointed two informal council committees to look at both meeting safety and the structure of the public comment period.
Following a presentation from the Security Ad Hoc Committee, council members voted on Oct. 14, to pay a police officer to attend their meetings. The added security will cost the city $11,000 a year.
That money will be taken out of an already-established pot of overtime money for the police department, Council Member Andre Boggerty, who chairs the security committee, said at the meeting.
Neil has been increasingly concerned about council member safety in recent months, he said, citing shootings in the city and an influx of residents attending city council meetings.
“If it gets heated and [attendees] want to take action or whatever, it’s scary,” Neil said.
Council members in favor of the police presence, including Neil and Boggerty, said having security would be consistent with other governments in Delaware, like the Kent County Levy Court and the state legislature.
Council Member Brian Lewis, however, said he does not think the security is an effective use of $11,000 from the police department budget.
“You’re wasting funds and resources by doing that, when we could have a cop out on the street protecting all the citizens,” he told Spotlight Delaware.
Dover Police Chief Thomas Johnson also attends most meetings.
The committee examining open forum procedure will make its first presentation at council’s meeting on Oct. 28.
Council Member Tricia Arndt, who was appointed by Neil to lead the committee, said her work thus far has included studying the history of public comment procedure in Dover and comparing the city’s current approach to other municipalities in Delaware.
Arndt said she found that the open forum has been held prior to the start of council meetings in Dover since 1993. She added that Dover’s rules are fairly similar to other places in the state, though some municipalities hold the comment period during the official meeting, and do not impose three-minute time limits on speakers like Dover.
Some council members, including Neil and Lewis, have mentioned the possibility of adding a second public comment period following the meeting for residents that do not get a chance to speak during the 15 minute “open forum” before the meeting begins.
Arndt said she does not plan to suggest any specific adjustments to the open forum policy at the Oct. 28 meeting. Instead, she will present her information on the history and context of other municipalities to see if council members think changes to the structure are necessary.
Videotaping the public comment period is not something that the Open Forum Committee has discussed though, Arndt said.
Get Involved
The Dover City Council Committee of the Whole will meet at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 28, at 15 Loockerman Plaza in Dover.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
