A total of 18 speakers signed up for the public comment period at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 1.
This is an enormous increase from the City Council meetings in April, May, June, July, August and September, when not a single person signed up to speak during the public comment periods, aka, speakers from the floor.
Although the public comment period was allegedly held at all of those meetings, there were no comments from the public. In October, people discovered they could speak and four speakers did.
However, there was a huge difference between the previous public comment periods held since the City Council started meeting virtually in April and the public comment period on Dec. 1.
The agendas for the City Council meetings in April through August did not include any indication that a regular old person with something to say could speak during the public comment period.
The agendas instead gave instructions on how someone could send an email to the City Council. For example this is the notice on how to make a public comment during the public comment period from the August agenda: “Public comments must be received by 10:00 a.m. on August 3, 2020. Comments are to be submitted to virtualcomment@greensboro-nc.gov and should include the speaker’s first and last name, phone number, and email address (for staff follow-up as needed). Comments will be summarized during the meeting and will posted at www.greensboro-nc.gov the day following the meeting.”
If “public comments” had to be received by 10 a.m. on the day of the 5:30 p.m. meeting, it is hard to decipher from that passage that a person could also, if they contacted the city clerk’s office, actually speak at the meeting, but that is how people were supposed to read it.
The City Council is required by state law to provide one public comment period of at least 30 minutes each month. Evidently, by having a public comment period on the agenda for the virtual meetings, the letter of the law was met, even though the agenda itself offered no instructions or advice on how a person could comment at the virtual meeting.
By contrast the City Council, after it started holding virtual meetings, immediately figured out a way for people to speak on public hearing items and resolutions and those instructions were included on the agenda.
What a crime that our council, mayor, and staff don’t even allow the minimum required by state law for months. Email comments are NOT the same as open public comments. Incompetence and disenfranchised citizens are the legacies of our current “leaders”.
Now after months and months of cheating the public to voice their opinions, the Mayor and City Council got caught. This is corruption working at it’s finest…. they should be indited and removed.
They just don’t want to hear (and SEE) any sign of a factual or dramatic opinion. They fear another Mark Robinson, our Lt. Gov-elect. Yet another method to smother dissension.
This stifling of our First Amendment right is rampant, and dangerous.
My goal is to get 10 people to speak about the corruption that enabled Hinson to get rewarded and excused for abusing children. I dont really understand why everyone isnt upset about that. Fighting against this type of corruption is extremely important.
There is so much of this stuff, that it’s hard to focus on any one.
It would help if there were real journalists in Greensboro too but there apparently isnt any.
I know of at least two: Mr. Hammer & Mr. Yost. There are no real journalists working at the fish-wrap, or at the local TV stations.