New Rules Offer Way To Speak Up

Nothing in the council’s new approach will prevent its meetings from being spirited. Heaven forbid.

If you believe Spokane City Council meetings have become to municipal politics what mosh pits are to rock music, take heart. Relief may be in sight.

Tonight’s council meeting will be the first under an improved set of rules and procedures.

As causes go, parliamentary procedure probably doesn’t make your pulse pound. Not like, say, the smelly compost facility somebody wants to build upwind from your house, or the commuter traffic that started spilling into your neighborhood when the rich folks up the hill got stop signs installed in theirs, or the many other crises known to ignite fiery showdowns in the council chambers and resentment throughout the community.

But it is for just such issues - at least for their orderly resolution - that clear and efficient procedures, rousing or not, are needed. Past practices at City Hall have produced surprises and suspicion, and they frequently have aggravated rather than eased public distrust. If the body-slamming mania that goes on at Lollapalooza concerts has an equivalent in public discourse, this was it.

The new system offers several improvements.

Agendas will be available more than a week in advance - ample preparation time for citizens who want to have their say.

Those who want clarification of agenda items can get it from city officials on the afternoon of meeting day.

The agenda will be arranged to get the cosmetic and the noncontentious out of the way early, leaving the main meeting for the substantive issues that draw stakeholders downtown on Monday evenings.

Citizens who have something to say about non-agenda items won’t have to wait throughout the evening to do so. The publiccomment period will be at a fixed time - 6:15 to 6:45. And, unlike before, those comments will be aired on cable television.

Nothing in the council’s new approach will prevent its meetings from being spirited. Heaven forbid. But meetings should be more focused, more constructive and more efficient.

Systematic rules, by themselves, aren’t enough to uphold democratic principles, of course. It takes informed citizens willing and eager to participate under those rules. We’re not talking about registering to vote and casting two or three ballots a year. We’re talking about being involved and actively looking out for your interests as a citizen year-round.

Sometimes that means attending a City Council meeting, maybe even giving testimony or, if not that, lending moral support to those who do.

If your reason for staying on the sidelines in the past was that you’re just too disinterested to bother, that’s your own fault. Political frustration and dissatisfaction are your proper reward.

However, if your excuse was that the system was too complex, lead time too short, the atmosphere too intimidating and too frenetic - those are faults the new procedures should address.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board