AURORA | Aurora lawmakers on Monday once again imposed new restrictions for public comment after months of heated council meetings with outbursts and a lack of decorum from members of the public, primarily one group of protesters.
Councilmembers Françoise Bergan and Danielle Jurinsky sponsored a new resolution to restrict public comment during city council meetings by proposing to shorten "public invited to be heard" to 40 minutes with 2-minute speaking times at a special session that will allow for city council to attend it virtually.
For months, most of the meetings have been dominated by, and even taken over by, regular protesters and commenters focusing on the police-shooting death of Kilyn Lewis last May. Lewis was fatally shot by an Aurora SWAT officer while being arrested.
The new restrictions passed with council members Alison Coombs, Crystal Murillo and Ruben Medina opposed.
The city council met remotely Monday for the second consecutive time because of an undisclosed threat reported by Aurora police.
"This council wants to continue to limit, limit until it goes away," Coombs said. "That's the message we're sending, is (that) we want to change public comments until you just go away, and I think that's unfortunate and harmful."
The measure could allow city council members to turn the volume down or off on their computers while "listening" to "the public invited to be heard" portion of the meeting.
"(The measure) is taking the public invited to be heard off the council agenda to make it its own special session. It's actually the same thing Denver does," City Attorney Pete Schulte told the Sentinel before the meeting. "There may be council members who won't have their video on, and they'll be muted because they won't be speaking, but if the public thinks that there are certain council members who aren't interested in hearing public comment, then those members of the public might try to make that an election issue."
Although the public comment segment will now be separate from the city council agenda, it is still considered a meeting, requiring proper public notice, and there's still going to have to be a quorum present, Schulte said.
"So it's not like they can all just decide not to listen," Schulte said. "They're going to have to be present, and they're already going to be there because it's going to happen right after study session concludes."
The change will give city staff, including the city manager and city attorney, the ability to not be present for the public invited to be heard, and it will require the city clerk or the clerk's designee to run the session instead of the mayor.
"It's a way to streamline the process," Schulte said.
The other rules in the resolution will give Aurora residents priority in speaking as long as they show proof of residency through an ID, utility bill, or something similar. An approved friendly amendment from Councilmember Curtis Gardner also changed the times, having "Public Invited to be Heard" from 6 p.m. to 6:40 p.m. and the city council meeting to begin at 6:45 p.m.
Since it is no longer part of the city council meeting, it is no longer required to be recorded for public viewing. City lawmakers have still not determined whether they will record the comment sessions for public viewing after.
Some council members agreed with critics that the growing restrictions counter a responsibility for lawmakers to hear all types of comment from constituents and the public.
"So we're saying you can't use your First Amendment right to protest," Coombs said. "You can only use it to say the things that fit within the confines of what we want to hear and how we want to hear it."
She said that, in the past several years, the city council was willing to sit for however long necessary to listen to residents about mobile homes parks being shut down, pit bull bans and Elijah McClain's death, which she also said to council members did not receive justice until after protests happened in council chambers.
The resolution also makes it "abundantly clear" that city council is allowed to end an individual's public comment during agenda items if the speaker is not sticking to the topic on the agenda. This was in response to disruptions after "justice for Kilyn Lewis" activists protested city council two weeks ago by hijacking all public comment after the city council voted to remove unrelated public comments at the previous meeting.
"I'm just disappointed that we've spent more time on moving the goalpost and changing the rules than actually discussing what justice looks like for this family that continues to come to every single council meeting," Auon'tai M. Anderson said.
Anderson, a former Denver Public Schools Board member and activist, has been at the forefront of the regular protests since they began in June.
When the city council meetings go back to being public, the new proposed resolution also clarifies that if people refuse to leave the lectern during public comment on agenda items, the city council can suspend the meeting and move to a private room at city hall. If disruptions continue, they will be able to go virtual.
The measure also allows for police to intercede in continued disruptions, at the behest of city officials.