By Brooklynn Wong
At the April 16 Anaheim City Council Meeting, Mayor Harry Sidhu, in an effort to keep meetings running in an “efficient, orderly fashion,” proposed some changes.
They were not drastic, and might help reduce Anaheim’s very lengthy City Council meetings, where dozens always turn out for oral communication, and each item of new business on the agenda often takes over an hour to vote on, due to endless Council member debates which often turn catty and personal. But some Councilmembers objected.
Currently, Anaheim City Council members have unlimited time to debate agenda items, and hardly anyone bats an eye when Councilmembers make dramatic accusations of one another, or when audience members use profanity in addressing the Council.
Sidhu thinks something needs to change, and this was his way of starting in that direction.
He said he looked at other cities’ policies on how long the Councilmembers can debate amongst themselves at City Council Meetings, and Anaheim’s policy seems to be the exception. He proposed having a short, regulated amount of time for Councilmembers to debate. He also suggested investing in some timers to keep them accountable.
Councilman Jose Moreno said only having a small, allotted amount of time “incentivizes” them to be rude and short with one another and with city staff, leading to harried discussions that would not allow for the hearing of complete information. He also was opposed to spending $3,000—the amount that Sidhu had mentioned—on new timers.
Councilwoman Denise Barnes was adamantly opposed, saying that ever since Sidhu began his tenure as Mayor four months ago, he has been chipping away at council members’ ability to express themselves. She said in the past they have been able to have “robust” discussion, “real, honest speaking with the last mayor.” She called what Sidhu was proposing “not good government” and wanted to table the discussion.
Mayor Pro Tem Lucille Kring did express support for the proposal, only objecting to the purchase of new timing equipment. She said one thing that would make meetings quicker and more efficient would be passing the consent calendar in one fell swoop, rather than pulling and discussing items on it. She encouraged her fellow council members to do their homework by reading the consent calendar ahead of time and getting questions answered, so they would be prepared at the meeting to just give a quick vote.
Councilman Trevor O’Neil also expressed measured support for Sidhu’s proposal. Though he said he does not want to limit debate where it is necessary, he said something like two rounds of five minutes of debate would be reasonable. He said he had reached out to colleagues in Irvine and Santa Ana, other big Orange County cities where such policies are in place, and asked if they feel this is too limiting. According to O’Neil, they said no, the policies in fact keep them on point and focused.
However Moreno later pushed back on this, saying O’Neil had mischaracterized what exactly those cities’ policies are.
Councilman Jordan Brandman suggested continuing this item for some time, to wait and “see how the next few meetings go” in light of some happenings earlier that night. In discussion of a different agenda item, Councilwoman Barnes had accused the Council of racism against her and Moreno. After the Council took a short recess, Brandman had called this “not a good night for Anaheim” and encouraged the Council to work on being more “sensitive” and “inclusive.”
He suggested seeing if at least from a respectfulness angle, the Councilmembers would keep themselves a bit more in line going forward in light of the night’s happenings, and then reevaluate to see if regulating meetings still seemed necessary.
There was an extra week separating that Council meeting (on April 16) from the next one (next Tuesday, May 7), so Sidhu suggested waiting only until that meeting to discuss this again. He proposed to have that on the agenda as the last item at the May 7 meeting.
Council voted on this motion, and it passed.
