The crowd at last night’s city council meeting.


PREVIOUSLY

Arcata’s city council meeting stretched ‘til almost 11 p.m. last night as dozens of residents showed up to complain about proposed changes to the city’s rules on addressing the council. 

City staff recommended that the council alter the City Officials’ Protocol Manual to eliminate a public comment period early on in the meeting and require commenters to show up at the meeting in-person, nixing the option to call in and talk on the Zoom livestream. 

After an hour and a half of deliberations and feedback from the public, the council decided they wouldn’t make either of those changes, though they did decide to add a city manager’s report to every council meeting and rules for kicking out disruptive audience members, as well as a few other minor procedural alterations. 

City staff and the council members had had some gripes with the Zoom commenting. Commenters would sometimes speak multiple times under different aliases; some city employees privately blamed it for fostering a culture permissive of anonymous personal attacks on other commenters and policy-makers alike; and some city staff and at least one councilmember, Mayor Alex Stillman, said she didn’t like how many of the Zoom commenters focused on global politics instead of city-related issues. Because Arcata is home to fewer than 30,000 people, city hall doesn’t have to offer a televideo conferencing option after SB 707 passed last month.

Zoom commenting is, however, an easy way for people with disabilities and time constraints to share their thoughts, an opinion shared by the many who spoke against the suggested alterations. 

“Going forth with banning Zoom is a load of shit, any way you slice it,” said one in-person commenter. “By definition, there will be people who cannot get here under any circumstances that will be censored entirely.”

“Getting rid of Zoom? Bad idea,” said another. “Come on. I think almost all of you realize what a really, really bad anti-democratic look that would be…We want you to look good! We love the stuff you do for the city! Keep doing it!”

City manager Merritt Perry said in an interview with the Outpost this morning that, as one of the staff who suggested the changes, he had mainly hoped to stop people from talking multiple times and to encourage commenters to be a little more respectful of other speakers and city officials, as well as to make relations between the council and the public more personal. However, he said that his mind had been changed by the public who showed up to argue in favor of Zoom, and thought the council ended up making the right decision.  

“I think it was a mistake to include that, and I think the community made a lot of incredibly good points about how Zoom is important for accessibility, how there’s a lot of people who can’t make it to the meetings,” Perry said. “I think I was really focused more on what some of the benefits would be but not focusing on how important it was to other members of the community who really need that platform to get to our meetings. I think it was a mistake to include that.”

Update, 11/7: A quote from a commenter has been updated to include the word “almost.”