MAILBAG: Public can’t read city staff’s minds

Public can’t read city staff’s minds

Frank Quintero, since becoming mayor, has opted to limit public debate. Is he right?

The other night, after all the speakers had spoken, Margaret Hammond and I said to the mayor that he had forgotten to let us speak. The mayor said we did not turn in our speaker cards as directed before the start of the agenda’s action items. He said we could come forward and speak this one time, but that in the future, he no longer wanted audience participation after all speaker cards had been turned in to the city clerk and before council discussion.

Hammond said she had no intentions of speaking on the water conservation subject. But when water department officials presented two options that the public could comment on, Margaret said she was caught unaware. Now the mayor was basically telling her that, in the future, it would be tough luck if you can’t read the tea leaves in the city staff memos.

I doubt if Quintero and Councilmen John Drayman or Dave Weaver appreciate the similarities between their actions and those that are going on in Iran. Participatory democracy or democratic debate is resisted by those who’ve become accustomed to having it their way.

The message is loud and clear — silence your opposition with counter-lawsuits or any means short of gagging or putting them in jail. Council members and staff know what is best for the public.

Today council members don’t debate the speaker during agenda items as the law allows. They wait until the end of the council session and pick one opinion, often out of context, and twist the argument often in some grotesque version of the intended opinion. We then have to stay quiet and take the abuse from the dais. Why? Because council members always get the last word in any discussion.

Where is the option for debate that the Brown Act allows for public participation? Now, I look at the situation in Iran and fully empathize with the plight of the demonstrators. I guess true democracy and public participation lose their sheen to those who get themselves in a position of power. How powerful they must feel to shut out alternative points of view with impunity.

People are dying around the world for democracy under the rule of autocratic regimes, but in our little democratic enclave — Glendale — we have our own authoritarian council members learning to behave like “dictators-in-training.”

MIKE MOHILL

Glendale