I couldn’t agree more with City Council member Loren Taylor about the need to make council meetings more accessible to the public. Here’s what he told Oaklandside:
“What we are missing [in Oakland] is we have a small fraction of people who have the time, the resources, and some are professionally paid or incentivized to come to council meetings to advocate. That voice crowds out others. Their voice has a disproportionate weight and impact on decision-making. What I would change is creating a better representative voice at these critical decision-making moments. Obviously, it’s on each of us as councilmembers to be in touch with the breadth of our constituency and not simply react to the louder voices in the room. But I’ve seen that occur to what I believe is the detriment of the collective voice of Oaklanders are wanting and needing.”
So true. Anyone familiar with City Council meetings has known for years that radical lefties dominate the public comment period. Frequently, extremist organizations like the Anti Police-Terror Project (or, as I call them, the Proud Boys of the left) line up speakers to comment on issues regarding police funding. I don’t know if it’s true, as Loren says, that they’re “paid” to do so, but whoever they are, they clearly have the patience and time to negotiate through a system that is hard for the average citizen to master.
It used to be that you could go to Council meetings in person to talk. It was pretty simple: you just showed up, filled out a form, took a seat, and waited for your name to be called. But then COVID struck, in-person meetings were ended, and now, the only way for people to comment is online, or through a phone.
The process is enormously complex and tedious. At the risk of taking up almost the entire space of this post, here are the Council’s instructions on what they call “public participation”:
The public may observe and/or participate in this meeting many ways.
OBSERVE:
• To observe, the public may view the televised video conference by viewing KTOP channel 10 on Xfinity (Comcast) or ATT Channel 99 and locating City of Oakland KTOP - Channel 10
• To observe the meeting online from the City’s Agenda Meeting Calendar, at the noticed meeting time, please click on https://oakland.legistar.com/calendar.aspx and click on the “In Progress” link under “Video” for the corresponding meeting.
• To observe the meeting by video conference, please click on this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89870211355 at the noticed meeting time.
• To listen to the meeting by phone, please call the numbers below at the noticed meeting time: Dial (for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):US: +1 669 900 6833 or +1 253 215 8782 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 929 436 2866 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 312 626 6799 or 833
548 0282 (Toll Free) or 877 853 5247 (Toll Free) or 888 788 0099 (Toll Free) or 833 548 0276 (Toll Free) Meeting ID: 898 7021 1355
If asked for a participant ID or code, press #.
COMMENT:
ALL PUBLIC COMMENT ON ACTION ITEMS WILL BE TAKEN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MEETING UNDER ITEM 1. COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA WILL BE TAKEN UNDER OPEN FORUM AT THE END OF THE MEETING
There are three ways to submit public comments.
• eComment. To send your comment directly to Council members and staff BEFORE the meeting starts please click on https://oakland.legistar.com/calendar.aspx and click on the “eComment” link
for the corresponding meeting. Please note that eComment submission closes five (5) minutes before posted meeting time.
• To comment by Zoom video conference, click the “Raise Your Hand” button to request to speak when Public Comment is being taken on a eligible agenda item at the beginning of the meeting. You will be permitted to speak during your turn,allowed to comment, and after the allotted time, re-muted. Instructions on how to “Raise Your Hand” is available at: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205566129 - Raise-Hand-In-Webinar.
• To comment by phone, please call on one of the above listed phone numbers. You will be prompted to “Raise Your Hand” by pressing “*9” to speak when Public Comment is taken. You will be permitted to speak during your turn, allowed to comment, and after the allotted time, re-muted.
Please unmute yourself by pressing *6.
If you have any questions, please email the Agenda Management Unit at cityclerk@oaklandca.gov
* * *
If you don’t have a headache by now, good for you! I’m a reasonably intelligent adult, but even I have trouble understanding all this. And that’s assuming that the system works as advertised.
It’s hard for people who work and have jobs and families and other things to attend to, to figure out how to negotiate this system. It’s mentally tiresome and time-consuming—unless, that is, someone’s paying you to do it. In fact, I’ve often wondered if the City Council deliberately makes it hard. I think they don’t like hearing from the public. They wish they could just issue edicts without the bothersome, tiring inconvenience of hearing from people who disagree with them. Loren Taylor seems like a reasonable guy, but I think he’s different from the intolerant radicals, like Bas, Thao, Kaplan, Fife, Kalb and Gallo. They have political agendas they want to impose on us; they suffer public comments because they have to, but they don’t really give a crap about what we think, unless we agree with them. Fife is the poster child of intolerant City Council members who refuse to communicate with anyone outside their little cult.
But thank you, Loren Taylor, for pointing out that the City Council lives in a bubble in which competing voices are excluded. (By the way, it’s the same at the Police Commission. The only people who comment there are anti-police radicals.) If you’re serious, Loren, then please work to make it easier for us, the Public, to talk to our electeds! Otherwise, we’re living in a banana republic, not a representative democracy. Oh, and by the way, we need a much fuller understanding of Loren’s statement that some commenters are “professionally paid.” Who are these people? Who’s paying them to comment? Follow the money.
Steve Heimoff