You’ve probably heard that El Paso’s latest mayor doesn’t want to hear from the proles. Via the El Paso Times:
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo is proposing tweaking the rules for public comment during City Council meetings.
While Margo wants to increase the public comment session from 30 minutes to an hour, he is proposing that any group of five or more people wanting to speak on the same topic will have to select a representative to speak for them.
Each speaker won’t have more than three minutes to address the council.
“There’s really nothing significant other than I’m increasing the time to an hour for public comment. That’s the bulk of it,” Margo said of the proposed changes that will be discussed during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Right. Nothing significant, except the mayor is proposing reducing the number of speakers by eighty percent.
“What’s the difference,” he probably meant to say. “It’s not like I care what they’re talking about anyway. We’ve already made our decisions, and public comment is just chatter.”
Personally, if I thought a representative could adequately express my concerns, I’d just push the snooze button and roll on over.
I mean, really, City Council is already working almost ten hours a week. Why should we expect them to spend extra time listening to the citizens?
I’m not sure where Mayor Margo is coming from. I wouldn’t think that it would be hard to change a tee time on a Tuesday.
I think that Mayor Margo is increasing access by the public by doubling the time the public is allowed to speak. I have been to many public meetings where a seemingly endless parade of people repeat the same argument over and over again. Lengthening the time for cogent and unique comment should really help the decision makers do their jobs. Just having a pulse doesn’t qualify you to contribute something meaningful to the conversation.
I agree that City Council meetings can be excruciating, and while I haven’t attended one hosted by the current City Council, I can attest that some of the pain in the past was caused by the uninformed pedantry of the City Representatives.
Will public comment ever reach an hour? I suspect not, if we reduce the number of speakers by eighty percent. Attending City Council meetings can be hard, and time consuming. Only a handful of people go to them for fun. Sometimes the shear number of the people influences City Council. We should be encouraging participation in the political process instead of limiting it.
Democracy can be slow and cumbersome. But you’ll never find a diamond in a puddle of mud if you’re not willing to get dirty.
That’s not the point. The people have the right to speak and they have the right to say the same damn thing as everyone else. This is a representative republic and those people sitting on that dais represent us. They are NOT our bosses. A large number of people speaking pretty much the same thing on a subject usually means it MIGHT be a good idea to take another look at the subject. Why is the Mayor the arbiter for who gets up to speak? I’d like to see the stupid dais done away with and have them sitting at the long white folding tables on OUR level.
l don’t why anyone is surprised that an oligarch is acting like an oligarch. l remember about 20 years ago, that little weasel Margo was running for office. l don’t remember which one since he ran for about every position there is about 87 times. Anyway, that schmuck was on a local radio show and l called in to ask him if the Tiguas should have the right to have their casino. Well, he himms and hawws for what seemed like an eternity (weasel talk) before he said that he’s against it. The way he answered the question tells me that Margo was/is disingenuous. Right now l’m looking at the flyer that he sent me explaining why he should be our mayor. Most of these endorsements are just more of the same oligarchy, pompous, elitist class. l live in El Paso, so l guess l shouldn’t be surprised that he won. This town is mainly comprised of retarded monkeys breeding more retarded monkeys.
Stupid people voted for this guy who’s full of himself. Now he’s trying to say Certificates of Obligation are good. Yeah they’re good, because we can’t vote on them. The city council looks on us as an open checkbook. 1.5% property tax increase and 66 million more in debt to pay for unfinished projects. Meet the new boss, same as all the previous old bosses. Your new city council’s first two orders of business; shoot down a vote petition, raise taxes.
Are there city council meetings every Tuesday, ever other Tuesday, or only one Tuesday a month?
It’s every other Tuesday, but sometimes they call a special meeting on the Tuesday in between.