The Apopka City Council passed 4-1 an amended resolution updating the city’s public participation procedures so citizens could be given more opportunities to express their concerns during meetings.
Commissioner Nick Nesta voted against the amended resolution.
Radley Williams, parks and recreation director/interim city administrator, presented several proposed amendments to Resolution 2025-19 at the May 7 meeting.
The following amendments were approved:
- 30 minutes will be set aside at the beginning of each council meeting as the public comment period.
- Citizens who fill out an intent-to-speak form and give it to the city clerk will be given three minutes to address the council, down from four minutes, to allow as many residents as possible to speak.
- If a large number of citizens are at the meeting, the time per speaker could be reduced to two minutes per speaker.
- Groups of citizens who would like to speak on the same agenda item or concern may select a spokesperson to speak on their behalf. In this situation, an extra one minute will be given to the spokesperson’s time per resident, up to six minutes total.
- Citizens electing to have a spokesperson must be present during the public comment period.
- The spokesperson must be indicated on the intent-to-speak form and given to the city clerk.
Additional approved amendments included: the mayor will read decorum announcements at the beginning of each meeting; public comment will be allowed in workshops at the council’s discretion; and budget workshops will have more flexible public comment rules.
Nesta argued that the public should be given opportunities to speak at city budget workshops after each department presents its budget, instead of allowing all the departments make their case yet each resident is given only four minutes to respond based on the overload of information.
“I want to hear, okay, parks and rec [department] comes up and presents,” Nesta said. “I want to hear from the public pros and cons. What are you guys thinking? What are you feeling? Are we on point? Are we not? Then the next department, next department, and we need instant feedback to be able to make that decision. Whereas if we go through two, three, four hours of workshop, the residents only have four minutes to respond to all that information. It’s not fair, it’s not equitable for public participation in that.”
Vice-Mayor Diane Velazquez offered the suggestion that the chair or mayor should read the decorum announcement at the beginning of every meeting, saying it would improve consistency. She said she had emailed Williams about this matter.
Velazquez also recommended updating the resolution to officially allow public comment at workshops. The previous resolution hadn’t allowed public comment during workshops; however, the council’s practice had been to allow it.
During public comment for the proposed resolution amendments, resident Rod Olsen said four minutes is not enough time for citizens to address the City Council.
“Do you know how hard it is to get what you’d like to say down to four minutes?” Olsen asked. “Anything less than that is unacceptable. The aspect of the one part I did like about it is, if you speak for a group, you can go up to six minutes. So I think that might save some time along the way as well. But … to the people that present four minutes is a tight time schedule.”
The discussion about the council’s management of public comment began last summer, when the council decided to move public comment to the end of each meeting but not livestream it on the city’s YouTube channel.
Since that time, Nesta has livestreamed the public comment on his Facebook page.
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