San Diego will start allowing lengthy group presentations by online participants at City Council meetings next Monday, a fundamental policy change that could make meetings significantly longer.
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The change is part of several new city policies aimed at boosting public participation that the City Council approved Monday. Others include creating a legislative glossary and making it easier to email comments.
The council was forced to change its policy for group presentations by a new state law – Senate Bill 707 – that seeks equal rights for people submitting testimony online versus in person.
The goal is leveling the public participation playing field for working families, homebound residents, people traveling and others who can’t conveniently attend public meetings in person.
SB 707 is forcing hundreds of cities across California that stopped allowing online participation after the pandemic to resume doing so by this Wednesday.
The law created a different challenge for San Diego because the city already allows online testimony, but has been limiting group presentations to in-person meeting participants.
San Diego could have completely eliminated group presentations, which become possible when several speakers come together to cede their speaking time to one unified speaker who makes a lengthy presentation.
Instead, the city decided to achieve equality by allowing such organized presentations – and such ceding of time – by groups coming together both in-person and online.
Such presentations will be limited to 15 minutes and they must be requested at least 24 hours in advance, with a group leader submitting a participant roster and uploading any slide presentations in advance.
City officials had considered setting a minimum number of participants, such as five or 10. But they eventually decided to allow groups as small as two.
Council President Joe LaCava, who helped craft the changes with City Clerk Diana Fuentes, said the city made the right choice by preserving group presentations instead of eliminating them.
“We proposed changes to protect public participation by re-imagining the process of ceding time,” LaCava said. “The bottom line is we are expanding opportunities for public comment and input at our public hearings.”
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But LaCava also acknowledged that such experiments are risky, characterizing the council’s upcoming meetings – before a long legislative recess between July 15 and Aug. 18 – as a sort of trial period.
“There may be some bumps in the road,” he said. “We’ll react and possibly pivot.”
Victoria LaBruzzo, leader of an umbrella organization for 41 neighborhood planning groups across the city, said the new policy requires more advanced coordination among people trying to do a group presentation.
LaBruzzo, leader of the Community Planners Committee, also criticized the wider city effort to boost public participation for not making neighborhood planning groups a key part of that effort.
The new policy doesn’t allow group presentations by a mixture of in-person and online meeting participants. Fuentes said the city hopes to find software that would make such “mixed” group presentations possible.
Other elements of the wider effort include translating city documents into “plain language” and creating a new online legislative glossary so confused people can look up government jargon and other confusing terms.
In addition, LaCava will start adding estimated lengths to each agenda item on the council docket so people can better anticipate when the item they care about will get debated.
The clerk’s office is also translating city agenda items into more languages and has added a clickable box on the city’s website that says “How to Provide Comment at City Council Meetings.”
Fuentes said many of the changes were prompted by feedback her staff got at a series of forums and listening sessions.
The new rules apply to council committee hearings in addition to meetings of the full council.
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