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Mayor Control-Control-Control Learnard is at it again tonight, except she has an added target: her own council members.
She wants to require that a majority of council must vote — not in an open meeting and not in any officially recorded vote — before adding any item to the official City Council agenda that then will be voted on in public at a public meeting. One could argue the measure takes away their elected power and is thus illegal on its face.
And if that’s not insult enough to the mayor’s oft-stated desire for openness in government, she wants — just like last year — to delete your ordinance-granted power to ask to appear yourself in person on the council agenda in a public meeting to petition the elected officials for a redress of your grievance.
Here’s the proposed new ordinance:
“(c) Agenda item request. City staff with approval from the city manager, or the mayor and two Council members, or three councilmembers may request to have an item placed on the agenda, by filing such request in writing with the city clerk prior to noon on the Thursday preceding the council meeting. Such item may not be placed on the agenda if council has already decided the issue within 180 days.”
Until now, any one council member had the right to get an item on the agenda without getting permission from anybody else on council. That is a common-sense power of an elected official.
If Mayor Control-Control-Control has her way, that ability of an elected official to represent constituents gets taken away.
Instead, three members of council have to agree together — in secret, away from the public eye and outside a public meeting — to put an item on the agenda.
The big downside is that the same three have been granted the secret power to keep some topic off the agenda, in effect voting against something out of sight and without public notice.
That vote for or against an agenda item — I strongly contend — is an official action that requires advance public notice, a public meeting, an officially recorded vote and minutes released to the public about the topic and who voted for or against. That’s in keeping with the Georgia Open Meetings law.
Mayor Control-Control-Control has thus opened the council to legal action for violating the Open Meetings law.
And if the city clerk refuses to release the written requests for agenda access and the votes for or against such access, the city clerk will be in violation of the Georgia Open Records Act.
The other problem is that the proposed change gives more power to the city manager than to city council members to decide what the council will be voting on in open meetings. That’s an anti-democratic (small “d”) move away from elected officials setting the policies for the city.
The staff time argument is non-sensical. Citizens have availed themselves of this redress right fewer than a half-dozen times in the past several years. And if staff is occasionally asked to work overtime, these well-paid public servants can receive overtime or other compensation.
This removal of a right of redress and this removing the right of individual elected officials (there are only five of them) is a bad, bad, bad idea that should be voted down tonight 5-to-0.
Whoever votes in favor of Control-Control-Control has betrayed their constituents and the voters of Peachtree City.
Below is my opinion column from a year ago that deals with the same issue but which then affected only the citizens, and not the individual council members.
OPINION — Will the Peachtree City Council vote against the First Amendment tonight?
[Feb. 16, 2023]
How is that even possible?
I suggest to you that the ordinance provision the council is considering voting against tonight is — upon further reflection — the near-perfect implementation of the First Amendment right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Think with me: the city ordinance that allows an individual private citizen to place an item for discussion on the official meeting agenda of the Peachtree City Council is as pure a form of petitioning the government as I know.
Years ago, a city council thought enough of its citizens to give them a place at the table of power. If your item is on the official council meeting agenda, it cannot be ignored, passed over, buried or forgotten. It must at least get a hearing before the persons elected to govern this city. And then entered into the historical minutes of that official government meeting, available to be read and discussed by future citizens.
Democracy in a constitutional republic doesn’t get any more functional and grassroots than that. And government — local or higher — doesn’t get much closer to honoring in practice the First Amendment than that.
And after a local resident rediscovered that nearly forgotten right in the city code, the City Council at its meeting tonight at City Hall will be forced to listen to her petition for a redress of grievances — in this case about a potential change to voting precincts across the city and county.
And somebody on City Council and/or city staff really dislikes that a mere citizen would be allowed to intrude on their lofty deliberations. Thus a vote tonight on removing that right from the city code, and thus returning the citizens back to their appropriate place of being spectators to decisions that affect their lives.
Folks, I am in awe of the unknown (to me) past council members who thought highly enough of their constituents to enshrine that basic First Amendment right into the city code that binds the council to listen.
That right to petition does not mean that you will get your way. It simply means that people in power will be compelled to at least listen to your petition. They still may deny your petition, but at least it will be heard.
Is that right important to you? Tonight we’ll see how important that right is to the five members of the City Council. Because tonight, your City Council members will be voting for or against your First Amendment right that’s enshrined in the ordinances of Peachtree City.
Do Mayor Kim Learnard and council members Mike King, Phil Prebor, Frank Destadio and Clint Holland want you to continue to bother them with your pesky petitions? Or will they kick you and your petitions to the curb?
Tonight the First Amendment will get a vote, up or down, yes or no.
[Cal Beverly has been the editor and publisher of The Citizen since 1993.]
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