(Photo illustration by Valerie Osier)
At Monday’s meeting, Spokane City Council approved a slate of council meeting rule changes that will go into effect starting next week and run through the end of 2024. Major changes included shifts to decorum rules that limit what is considered appropriate conduct during the meeting, legislative testimony and Open Forum, which is the “limited public forum” where citizens can come to speak to their electeds. Some of the new rules are starkly different from what was allowed in 2023, and could be confusing, so RANGE has put together a handy guide of the do’s and don’ts of civic engagement under the new council rules.
Definitions of decorum
Spokane City Council meetings have always had rules of decorum that define what is and isn’t allowed in the chambers. In the past, those rules have included banning “demonstrations, banners, signs, applause, profanity, vulgar language, obscene speech, physically pounding the dais or other furniture, yelling, or personal comments or verbal insults about any individual.” Now, after some council attendees took to standing to show support — and turning their backs to show disapproval — for public testimony or council comments, standing has been added to the list of banned expressions, a decision hotly protested by those who came to speak on the proposed council rules last week.
What enforcement of this policy will look like is up in the air, especially for people who may need to stand because of disabilities, or, with the way the rules are written, who need to get up to go to the bathroom. The do’s and don’ts of this one look something like: DON’T stand as a form of speech, DO stand if you need to for your comfort or safety.
It’s also worth noting that the rules have the all-important “including but not limited to” clause for banned speech, leaving a question in the air about whether silent motions like displaying thumbs up or thumbs down would be allowed under the current rules.
The other big DON’T that isn’t necessarily categorized as a decorum rule, but reads like it will be enforced as such, is a new prohibition on photography and filming. Except during the beginning of the meeting, when proclamations and salutations happen, the public is banned from taking photographs or video, because it “may disrupt the ability of the public to view the council meeting.” Unlike some of its countywide counterparts, Spokane City Council is pretty good about live broadcasting their meetings, and posting recordings (which can be viewed here) in a timely fashion, but this was another sticking point for free speech advocates at the meeting on Monday.
While the rules have an exception for press (as long as they stay in the press area), it’s important to note that the press freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment doesn’t only apply to employed journalists, but to every citizen. So, we have questions about how this new rule will be enforced, as well as how this will affect our Documenters, citizens we pay to attend meetings who take notes, audio recordings and photos so we can create a better public record.
RULE: Members of the public may photograph or film council proceedings subject to the limitations in this rule. No flash photography or other lighting is permitted. Except during portions of the meeting council meeting involving presentation of awards, proclamations, salutations or other commemorative events, all photography and filming shall be conducted from the areas of Council Chambers or meeting room set aside for members of the media, and no photography or filming shall be permitted from center or side aisles or from the seating area, as such activity may disrupt the ability of the public to view the council meeting. Individuals violating this rule may be subject to removal.
Testimony on legislative items
One of the most important avenues for public participation at city council meetings is the time to testify on agenda items before they are voted on. When it comes to legislative testimony, folks can speak for three minutes on each item, and there is no limit to the amount of people who can sign up to speak. While most of the rules for public legislative testimony stayed the same, we wanted to lay them out anyway.
DO read the agenda when it gets posted on Friday, or give our CIVICs section a skim on Monday, to see if the city council will be voting on anything that you want to share testimony on.
DON’T sweat it if you can’t get down to City Hall before 6 pm on Monday to sign-up. Thanks to an amendment introduced by freshman council member Kitty Klitzke, those planning to speak can sign up online after 5 pm on the Friday before the meeting. We’ll update this story when that link is live. Sign-ups will also be taken at an iPad kiosk in Chase Gallery, located in the basement of City Hall starting at 8 am Monday morning all the way until the meeting starts at 6 pm.
DON’T feel limited to speaking on just one item. Folks can, and have, testified on every single agenda item. You get three minutes of testimony for each item on the agenda that you have signed up for.
DO identify yourself by a name and city of residence before speaking. Lovingly referred to as the “Dave M. rule” by council member Jonathan Bingle on the dais, this language used to ask folks to sign up with their “true name,” but after repeated clashes with speaker “Dave M.”, who chose not to provide his last name when testifying, council gave up on enforcing any kind of need for a true name. However, they do still ask that speakers share their city of residence so that the city can track which concerns are from constituents.
DON’T plan on using any visual media to help illustrate the point you want to make. This was one of the biggest shifts to legislative testimony rules. Previously, speakers could send in videos, diagrams, graphs, photos and other forms of visual aid into the City Council Director that would be projected onto a large screen for the public to see; this is no longer allowed. Citizens can still email these things to citycouncil2@spokanecity.org for the council members to view later. If you want to CC erin@rangemedia.co on emails with visual aids, we’ll do our best to live-tweet your visual aid as we cover the meeting, so there is a digital public record of what you’d planned to submit.
Open Forum
Previously, Open Forum was scheduled for the beginning of the Monday meetings, sandwiched in between proclamations and the consent agenda. This is the space where the public can bring up issues to council members that aren’t listed on the agenda. Effective Monday, January 29, it will instead begin after the city council has voted on all items in the legislative agenda, with space for 20 people to speak for two minutes each.
If you’re hoping to speak, here’s what you should plan for:
DO sign up in advance of the meeting. Open Forum was also included in Klitzke’s amendment, so sign-ups will begin digitally on Friday after the agenda is posted, and on Monday morning in-person at an iPad kiosk in Chase Gallery, located in the basement of City Hall starting at 8 am Monday morning all the way until the meeting starts at 6 pm.
DO tune into the beginning of the meeting virtually to see if you received a slot. There are 20 total speaking slots available. Instead of being assigned on a first-come-first-served basis, these will instead be assigned via random generation that will be projected onto the visual aid screen at the beginning of the meeting in order to preserve transparency.
Council members pitched this as a way to keep people from having to rush down right after work, or sit through a whole meeting waiting for Open Forum without knowing if they’d received one of those 20 slots. So, if you aren’t selected and you don’t want to hang out for the whole meeting, you can stay home, and if you are picked, you can mosey your way down to City Hall in time to speak after all legislative business is finished.
DON’T plan on using any visual media to help illustrate the point you want to make. This rule change also applies to Open Forum. While Open Forum speakers could previously send in videos, diagrams, graphs, photos and other forms of visual aid into the City Council Director that would be projected onto a large screen for the public to see, this is no longer allowed. Again, citizens can still email these things to citycouncil2@spokanecity.org for the council members to view later. If you want to CC erin@rangemedia.co on emails with visual aids, we’ll do our best to live tweet your visual aid as we cover the meeting, so there is a digital public record of what you’d planned to submit.
DO check both the current and advance agendas prior to the meeting to see if the item you’re planning to talk about is coming up on the docket in the next two weeks. Per the council rules, open forum time cannot be used to speak on items the city has on the current or advance agenda.
This has led to a lot of confusion in the past, where folks have signed up to speak at Open Forum only to be stopped. When Open Forum was at the beginning of the meeting, it was easy for the council to move speakers from Open Forum to the list of folks testifying separately on the agenda item of their choice, but with Open Forum moved to the end, we’d hate to see folks wait all meeting only to get hit with a “point-of-order,” — a term that stops a speaker from talking due to a rules violation.
We know the agendas are a lot to review, and it can be hard to know if the item you want to speak on is one. You can always find the current and advance agendas living on the city website here. We also do our best to highlight important items for the week in our CIVICS section, which – shameless plug – you can have delivered straight to your inbox every Monday morning by signing up here.
DON’T plan on talking about items that are outside the “affairs of the city.” What exactly is within the affairs of the city? Good question. In 2023, the council’s rules had no definition for this language, instead relying on subjective judgment from the council president, leading to an argument in June about whether or not folks could use their time to read scripture from the Bible. This year, “affairs of the city” has been further spelled out — which we’ve broken down into common language with examples — to include:
- Anything the city has legislative, financial or regulatory authority over. Examples would include the condition of the roads by your house, contracts the city might be debating signing or whether or not fluoride should be in the city’s water.
- Any ordinance, resolution or official act adopted by the city council. Examples would include anything the city council passed previously that has impacted you or that you still have thoughts about, like the pro-Israel resolution passed on October 9 or the ordinance over the summer that prohibited being in the parks after certain times.
- Any rule adopted by the city. Examples include new building or development codes and water rationing rules in the summer.
- Anything about the delivery of city services or the operation of city departments. Examples would include garbage pick-up times, complaints or compliments of code enforcement and the cost of city water services.
- Any act by a member of the city council, the mayor or the mayor’s administration. Examples would include the comments last year about former Mayor Nadine Woodward hanging out with white nationalist Matt Shea or making complaints about a council member’s conduct.
- Anything else the city council president deems within the affairs of the city. This leaves a little bit of subjective space for anything you can make a case for being the business of the city. It is worth noting that the council president can be overridden by a majority vote of the council members in attendance.
And those are the basics.
Remember, the city council adopts new rules at the beginning of each year, and can vote to make amendments to the current rules at any time, so if these rules don’t cut it for you, you can always bring them up at Open Forum.
