San Gabriel Valley Cities Using COVID-19 As Excuse to Censure the Public

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O O O

GUEST OPINION

“Un-mute me!” sign (Photo – Melissa Michelson)

Members of the public should be encouraged to participate in civic governance.  With city halls closed because of COVID19, the public’s right to engage meaningfully in that process is being chipped away.

By Melissa Michelson

At the July 16 Alhambra Planning Commission meeting, my letter and those from many others commenting on a new Inclusionary Housing Ordinance did not see the light of day. They were conveniently set aside and ‘added to the record’ rather than read aloud as other letters had been.

The Commission disposed of 24 letters together on the grounds that they were ‘similar.’  The city staffer arbitrarily read one, and then read out the authors of the other 23 letters, including my name. Several members of the public, including South Pasadena resident Linda Krausen and Alhambran Aristotle Acevedo, maintain that their letters were not similar to the one that was read. Local community group Grassroots Alhambra has filed a formal complaint with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office on the grounds that the City violated the public’s due process rights under the Ralph M. Brown Act when it did not read all written comments into the record as noticed in the meeting’s agenda.

When the public takes time to write letters, it is unacceptable for city leaders to summarily dispose of them.  El Monte and other cities are choosing to summarize the content of letters from the public, even though “Please read this out loud” has been inscribed on the letter.

On July 21, El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero proposed to summarize pre-submitted letters, including mine. In doing so he eliminated my credentials, left out my expression of support for Councilwoman Victoria Martinez-Muela for standing up for public voices at the July 7 meeting, left out the specifics of his behavior that I found deplorable, and failed to state what I was asking him to do: publicly apologize to the Councilwoman and  stop summarizing the public’s letters.

“They can shut down City Hall, but they can’t shut us down!”

Many city halls are closed to the public, and public city meetings are being held virtually on Zoom. Because of the social distancing needed during COVID19, members of the public cannot attend meetings in person.

But that’s not stopping the public’s physical presence.

On Monday, July 20, a protest was held outside a closed Alhambra City Hall before the Planning Commission’s virtual meeting. The attendees demonstrated their disapproval of shoving aside letters from the public during the July 16 meeting, as well their disapproval of a controversial mega-development being rushed through before the affordable housing ordinance is finalized. El Monte residents also have been seen protesting outside City Hall.

A protest outside Alhambra City Hall on July 20, 2020 (Photo – Melissa Michelson)

Technology also is disenfranchising the public

Virtual city meetings have been problematic for the public. For example, when the shut-down began, I tried listening to an Alhambra City Council meeting. I was blocked from listening because my phone carrier required me to purchase a separate plan in order to dial conference telephone numbers.

It’s not uncommon these days for members of the public to go unheard at public meetings because of unmuting issues. I often wonder if the administrator of the Zoom functionality is discriminating by not unmuting, if the administrator is indeed even on the line, or if the administrator is actually having problems with the mic function.

Rather than being more inclusive and convenient for the public to attend meetings, virtual city meetings are having the opposite effect.

City Council Members have full access to the mic during these meetings, so why should the public completely lose its access?

Public participation should be embraced, and not just now during this time of heavy reliance on city officials to make the right decisions for their municipalities.  When the public has a legal right to speak during the agenda, it is not just for the sake of the city officials reading pre-submitted letters.  It also is so that members of the public can hear each other while they are listening to the meeting, be that in real time or afterwards when one listens to the audio-video recording.

There should be zero tolerance for cities that use the COVID-19 pandemic to quash public participation in the governing process.  We, the public, have the right to participate, and cities need to respect the voices of the public they purport to serve.

Abuse can and does occur when cities wield their special powers in times of crisis to suppress public participation by cramming an agenda full of controversial issues and granting only limited time to the public to consume all of the information and then participate in the discussion in a meaningful way.

~ Grassroots Community Group of Alhambra, July 19, 2020 letter to the Office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney

Example of how a public letter was redacted

Here’s how El Monte Mayor Quintero chose to redact my July 21, 2020 letter:

“She was dismayed at the treatment of councilmember Martinez-Muela at the last meeting and she finds it frankly questionable that the mayor was supposedly acting on the advice of counsel, and she believes that Ms. Councilwoman Martinez was right to correct me on that point and she was concerned about the disturbing exchange.”

Here is the actual July 21, 2020 letter that I sent in to be read aloud: 

Please read this public comment out loud. Thank you.

As an elected member of the LA County Democratic Party for this Assembly District as well as a California Democratic Party delegate, I wish to express my extreme dismay at the Mayor Quintero’s treatment of Councilwoman Martinez-Muela at the last city council meeting. 

I fully appreciated her attempt to stand up for the rights of the public to voice their messages.  I find it disturbing and frankly questionable that the mayor was supposedly “acting on the advice of counsel”, as he said, to summarize the letters to be entered into the record rather than read them aloud.  It is also unacceptable that when public letters in El Monte City Hall are read aloud, that any councilmember interject their own commentary, like the Mayor did, as seen in a July 10 posting of the video that is making its way all over the Internet.     Councilwoman Martinez-Muela was right to correct him on that point, but that is when the Mayor unprofessionally raised his voice at her saying that HE was the one that had the mic and then he continued commenting on the public’s letter that there was no truth in it, completely ignoring what the Councilwoman was trying to tell him before he rudely and aggressively interrupted her. 

This disturbing exchange and behavior from the mayor serves as an example to other municipal governments as to how NOT to conduct a city council meeting, and I expect that Mr. Quintero first and foremost publicly apologize to the councilwoman, and immediately cease such conduct in the future. 

Thank you. 

Melissa Michelson
LA County Democratic Party, Member, AD49
California Democratic Party Delegate, AD 49

> Watch the exchange between the Mayor and the dissenting city councilmembers: Agenda #8: Public Comments).