The mayor said in last night’s meeting (FF: 10:45);
“We have never turned anyone away at these meetings . . . everyone has had an opportunity to engage the council . . . we have only asked they limit their comments to 5 minutes.â€
After a citizen pointed out someone the city has filed charges against had to spend 6.5 hours in jail and could not attend the council meeting the night of their arrest to make a presentation because of being incarcerated.*
Mike’s above statement is the biggest load of crap I have heard out of his mouth. At the December 18, 2012 Council Meeting citizens who supported a joint election with the school district for snowgates were censored (20 minute time limit imposed on a group of about 40 people by then council chair Erpenbach, and approved by the mayor). If you do the math, that is about 30 seconds a piece.
As I have told Mayor Huether in an email after that meeting;
“You can laud transparency all you want but I’m sorry Mike, just saying something doesn’t make it so. Limiting public testimony to 20 minutes and making up the rule before the meeting started without informing your fellow councilors was blatant CENSORSHIP! â€
His response;
“However, in fairness to Councilor Erpenbach and the process, ALL OF THE COUNCILORS were notified about the managing the debate time or “20 minute conversation†at 1:47pm on Monday. Your comment about “making up the rule before the meeting started without informing your fellow councilors†is not accurate. Whether or not the Councilors made the time to review it or whether or not they wanted to be open and transparent or not to you and to the public, I can’t verify.”
I found out later they were notified in an EMAIL, not a phone call, and several of the councilors did not see the email before the Tuesday meeting.
Mike seems to think some of us have short memories, but his lack of transparency has been following him since day one. He has been trying to stifle citizen advocates all along.
*As for the citizen that was incarcerated for 6.5 hours. They were told a few weeks ago (over the phone) that there was a warrant for their arrest (charges filed by the city) and that they should come to the jail the following week to be processed. The charge only required a recognizance bond (you don’t have to pay any bail). Normally it means you show up, you get processed and fingerprinted and are told what you are being officially charged with. Instead, they were jailed for 6.5 hours for processing.