Could they not just amend the rules to only allow city residents to speak?
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That’s what I was thinking. Totally agree. This is a city municipality, Raleigh. Not Cary, Apex, etc.
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Regardless of what they do, they have to operate under state law. If the state prevents the city from preventing speakers from outside the city, then there isn’t anything that they could do. That said, I don’t know whether or not there’s such a state law.
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Maybe this is an opportunity for the downtown CAC to organize an attempt to fill those spots before the out of towners can and each person can read from Strong Towns. Seems like it would be a much better use of that time for everyone present.
I’m only halfway kidding.
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Don’t think it’s a good idea to prohibit non-Raleigh residents from speaking. May not be legal to do so. There are situations that go before council that can directly impact non-Raleigh citizens - rezonings and annexations are the two that come to mind.
Instead I think all of the anti-abortion speakers should be grouped together and that group should always speak first. Agendas are online and list how many speakers are on the agenda and what their topic is. Each speaker gets 3 minutes.
If there are 9 speakers from this group on the agenda - as there were on Tuesday - let them all go first and then those who don’t want to sit through that know they don’t need to arrive until about 7:30.
Hopefully this leads to a diminishing audience and this group will go elsewhere.
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I straight up think they should just be banned. “free speech” my ass, they are ranting about sh!t that has nothing to do with City governing and wasting everyone’s time in the process. They are free to speak about it outside City Hall on the sidewalk. FOH with that, if they even slightly skew religious in their rants, they should be banned on grounds of Separation of Church and State. I really wish we, as a country, would actually start enforcing that standard.
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I completely agree. There’s a difference between hearing a different viewpoint and letting a fringe group hijack city government meetings every week
I think it would be extremely unfortunate if all non-residents lost the ability to speak as a consequence of one very specifically annoying group of mostly non-residents. That would be a “solution” that would go vastly beyond the scope of the problem.
I try not to Trust Me, I’m a Lawyer too much on here, but I do think that there is some misunderstanding about the nature of “separation of church and state”. The Establishment Clause is a limitation on things that government can do, not a limitation of things that citizens can do. It is not a violation of church and state for people to talk about their religious beliefs during a city council meeting. City councils would, however, run afoul of the Free Exercise Clause if they forbade people from mentioning their religious beliefs while speaking before the council. They simply cannot lawfully do that.
Obviously, unfortunately we have a group of people here who, whatever their motivations might be, have pretty egregiously abused the city’s hospitality and openness. Given the requirements of state law and the constitution, I’m not entirely sure what could or should be done about this. Maybe at some point, seeing that they are getting absolutely nothing accomplished with this, they will just give up and go home on their own.
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I wonder if there is a way to have speakers list their topic of conversation when they sign up. The council could not give time to people whose business is frivolous. I’m all for freedom of speech, but these people were elected to do a job.
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Solid points. But extremely doubtful these people will just give up. They’ll need to be banned, somehow, for that to happen.
Maybe the city can limit time based on topic…say, 10 minutes total? This way, they can come all they want, but they can’t delay the meeting by upwards of an hour? Is that legal @daviddonovan ?
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So that would certainly be constitutional because it’s a content-neutral restriction, and I don’t think there’s any state law that would preclude it, because IIRC the No Growth Council did something similar last year. I think the topic was ADUs, and they limited the supporting and opposing sides to some fixed number of time/speakers, and the consequence was that all of the NIMBY speakers got to speak, but there wasn’t enough time or slots for most of the YIMBY speakers.
All of which is to say that these rules can also be misused if we’re not careful. Certainly 10 minutes is more than sufficient to discuss a topic like abortion where the city council has literally no power to act, but there are lots of important topics within the city’s remit where it would be perfectly sensible to have an hour of public input.
My suggestion would be that the city council inform the city attorney that this is an issue they’re concerned about and seek an opinion on what their options are and try to craft a narrowly tailored solution that addresses the very specific concern here. The city attorney is going to be in the best position to offer advice on that.
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Since the Council literally has no power to act on abortion (no sh!t lol), could they ban discussion on the topic altogether, citing irrelevance?
I’m honestly not sure. Trying to outright ban discussion of any particular topic presents some very thorny legal issues. That would be a question for the city attorney for sure.
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Those requesting to address city council are required to follow the process and complete the form available here. The form requires speakers list their topic.
The less attention groups like this get - negative or positive - the better.
Again, I say group them all at the beginning of meetings and watch their audience dwindle.
This too shall pass.
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Or maybe a Council member or MAB can remind them that they have no power to impact their mission?
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…Or even attend?
You can’t prohibit freedom of speech but you should be able to control access e.g. check ID for Raleigh address before entering?
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That’d certainly be a start.
I understand the logic you have, but I don’t agree. There are plenty of people who work in Raleigh, but live elsewhere. They spend money in the city, use the infrastructure, and certainly could offer valuable opinions on a wide range of topics.
I think a rule like this could drive a wedge between the city and non-Raleigh wake county residents, and frankly we should be figuring out a way to get the entire county on the same page.
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I agree. I work and probably spend more time in Raleigh then I do at home Fuquay.
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