NORTHAMPTON — Concerned with public disruptions during discussions at City Council meetings that prevent people from hearing and seeing, a group of councilors are floating new rules that would ban “expressions of approval or disapproval in a meeting.”
The measure seeks to forbid the public for taking “any actions that interfere with the ability of all in the Council Chambers to hear or see the Council conducting its business.”
Sponsored by Ward 2’s Dennis Bidwell, Ward 4’s Gina-Louise Sciarra and Ward 3’s James Nash, the measure comes in the wake of a contentious debate over proposed new municipal surveillance cameras downtown. At times during those discussions, members of the public held up signs, cheered and jeered, and snapped fingers. Some councilors said this interfered with their ability to hear each other.
The measure doesn’t spell out these specific infractions, but says more generally that they “will not be permitted.”
The proposal has generated opposition from the public and some councilors. Though it was rejected by the council’s legislative matters committee on Monday, the measure will still be considered by the full council at its Thursday meeting.
The proposed change is part of an order that also seeks to have more pieces of legislation referred to committee, and to have the council meet with the mayor twice a year to discuss legislative priorities.
At the Jan. 18 council meeting, Sciarra characterized the decorum measure as a matter of letting people properly hear what’s going on at meetings, noting that crowd noise and discussion sometimes make that impossible.
“We shouldn’t be conducting business if we can’t hear,” she said.
At the same meeting, Ward 7’s Alisa Klein said that it was important for the council to interact with the public in vibrant ways, while also noting that it wasn’t OK for people to be rude or nasty.
“The last thing I want to do is shut down the conversations,” she said.
The council’s Feb. 1 meeting also saw three members of the public register their opposition to the decorum changes.
“From a purely legal perspective, what just got proposed is a completely unworkable First Amendment catastrophe,” said Blair Gimma, reading the comments of local attorney Dana Goldblatt.
Goldblatt’s message also criticized the presence of armed Northampton police officers at council meetings, asserting that such a presence was more disruptive than clapping, cheering or chatting. Officers can attend council meetings on various issues while they are on duty and are typically not requested by the council for safety reasons.
At Monday’s legislative matters committee meeting, City Council President Ryan O’Donnell spoke against the measure.
Speaking with the Gazette the next day, he said that most of the people who spoke voiced opposition to the measure. He also said that, as council president, he felt he had enough tools already to keep order in the council chambers.
“The presiding officer needs discretion,” he said.
The legislative matters committee chose to strike nearly all amendments to the council rules in the order, including the changes around decorum, before giving the order a positive recommendation. Councilor At-Large Bill Dwight, who chairs the committee, said this was akin to giving the order a negative recommendation.
“The effect is virtually the same,” Dwight said.
The one change that the committee chose to uphold, it turns out, had already been stricken from the council rules, as the sponsors were working with an older version of the rules.
Dwight said that the changes were rejected because they are already embedded in the rules and state law.
All votes were 3-0, although committee member and Ward 5 Councilor David Murphy was not present for the meeting. The other members of the committee are Ward 1 Councilor Maureen Carney, Dwight and Klein.
Both the legislative matters version of the order and the original order will be debated on the council floor at the Thursday’s council meeting. Dwight noted that with four people having voiced opposition to the order, and three sponsors, there may be a divided council on the issue.
Nash said that he will consider the input given at the legislative matters committee. He also said that he is hopeful that all three sponsors will be present.
On decorum, he said that he felt it was helpful that the council president have some rules and guidelines for handling decorum in the council chamber.
He also said that he hopes the council can come together and decide “what decorum looks like.”
In an email to the Gazette, Bidwell said that he and his fellow co-sponsors looked at the rules of conduct in Cambridge, Boston, Berkeley, Portland, Oregon, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and that what is being proposed was less restrictive than the specific bans on signs, clapping and booing that are found in some of these rules.
“Still, even with the fairly innocuous common sense language we proposed, quite surprisingly, some members of the Council have found this unacceptable, for reasons I don’t frankly understand,” Bidwell said.
He also said that the changes proposed were in response to members of the public saying that they had difficulty hearing and seeing at council meetings.
“In the end I am convinced that we would get greater levels of public participation if the public had reason to believe that they would be able to see and hear what goes on when they attend a Council meeting,” Bidwell said. “That’s really what it’s about — increasing the number of people who want to come participate at Council meetings.”
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.