Here's An Answer to Prevent Council From Taking Away Your Voice

One of the most innovative steps forward that the City of Lake Forest has taken in the last two years was incorporating the use of Facebook Live to allow more residents to participate in public discussion at City Council meetings.

That is now threatened.

At the Lake Forest City Council meeting tonight (Tuesday, March 3), the award-winning concept could very well be scrapped.

And that’s just plain wrong.

A functional Council should be listening to as many voices as possible as it carries out the business of the City. Some items are important, some are controversial, some are mundane. But the Council was elected by the people to carry out the will of the people and to objectively all options. It benefits from diversity of thought, although Lake Forest politics seems hell-bent on achieving group-think to carry out the ideals of the Republican Party of Orange County. This Council, it seems, refuses to discuss the big issues and explain their votes; for example, there was more discussion about changing a city street name to Artist Way than there was to renaming a street after a living 28-year-old baseball player and all the risks that entails. Those risks, by the way, were presented to the Council using the public comment feature in Facebook Live, to which Councilman Dwight Robinson said: "I move the item," and it then passed 5-0. Now the Council must wake up every day hoping that Nolan Arenado didn’t do something stupid the night before and that Matt Chapman doesn’t become a better player than Arenado.

Because the Council lacks such diversity of thought among at least four Council members -- Mayor Neeki Moatazedi, Scott Voigts, Mark Tettemer, and Robinson – it’s imperative that a forum exists where other ideas can be considered. And the reality is that not everyone with good ideas – or even bad ones – can make the 6:30 p.m. meeting of the Council. Meetings used to begin at 7 p.m., a time in which there was a good chance that the public had gotten off work or had managed to eat dinner; today, a 6:30 start can make it rough for anyone who has a family or other scarcity of time.

The City acknowledges increased engagement since adopting the Facebook Live feature. Basically, then-Mayor Jim Gardner’s idea has been a resounding success. The City was among the first in the nation to incorporate public comments in this forum into the official record.

Which brings us to today and the risk of permanently removing the public comment feature of using Facebook Live that allows residents to remotely enter comments into the public record and have them read in a public space. The feature has been suspended the last few months after a threatened lawsuit. City employees cite “potentially unavoidable technical issues such as delays with an online system and possible confusion from the public regarding when an item is officially accepted as public comment, that could expose the City to legal challenge.”

The recommended action by City Staff is to limit public comments to non-Brown Act meetings such as workshops, town hall meetings, and neighborhood meetings when appropriate. In sporting terms, City Staff is recommending that residents not be allowed to comment to the Angels, only their minor league affiliates if the City deems a particular game important enough. That is simply not acceptable in the age of technology.

The other proposed directive is to have Staff “explore options through its legislative partners to consider potential updates to State law that facilitate the use of social media by public agencies.” Who knows what that means, but my guess is “let’s wait and see what happens elsewhere and, in the meantime, Lake Forest residents are out of luck.”

The bottom line is that unless you’re physically at the meeting, your voice will not be heard.

And that would be a shame.

But there is an answer, one that hasn’t been presented by the City Staff. And, if I’m not able to physically be at the meeting to provide it, may never be heard because I usually can’t attend the 6:30 meetings. But it should clear up the concerns that the City may have regarding potential litigation.

A waiver. Terms and agreements. They’re everywhere. You want iTunes? You’ve got to agree to their terms. You want to watch Nolan Arenado’s Colorado Rockies play the Angels or Dodgers? There’s an agreement on the back of the ticket that you accept by using the ticket.

The same thing applies here. Writing “COMMENT TO COUNCIL” at the beginning of a post in the Facebook Live stream signals an acceptance of the terms and agreements put forth by the City that limits its liability in case of technical issues and whatever else the legal team deems appropriate, perhaps even including wacko rants that a reasonable person might consider offensive or obscene. Yes, it might involve creating a link to another web page that has all the terms and agreements, but that’s an easy fix in order to guarantee the participation of residents who may have childcare issues and are watching from home, or who are working a swing shift.

But this is not just about ideas, either. This is also about transparency and accountability. The public comment is a way for informed residents – and sometimes even uninformed ones – to call B.S. on elected officials who have abused the public trust, who have not done what they said they would, or who have lied openly from the dais of the City Council.

Given the “terms and agreements” option that I am presenting here – provided someone is able to present it in person tonight – any decision by the City Council to remove public comments from Facebook Live would be an attempt to insulate the Council from accountability, ideas – and sometimes, even praise.