The Boulder City Council is planning to tackle what some councilmembers say is an increasingly dysfunctional open comments section during its virtual meeting Thursday night.

It will be the first time the council has formally and publicly addressed the issue. Open comments offer the public an opportunity to directly address the council — in-person or virtually — on any topic they choose within a time limit. There are no restrictions on what commenters can speak about. But that has led to increasing concern from councilmembers.

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war has dominated the open comments section for nearly two years. Protesters decrying the actions of the Israeli government on the people of Gaza pepper the commenters list, as do supporters of Israel or Jewish people who claim the pro-Palestine demonstrators are being racist and hateful.

The council, according to Thursday’s agenda, is slated to commit 45 minutes to the topic.

“Open comment has been taking an extraordinary amount of time,” Councilmember Nicole Speer wrote to the council’s email hotline on Wednesday. “This is taking time away from the other business of the meeting. I would like to put some boundaries around the time spent on open comment so we can get on to the other business of the city.”

The heated comments have led to cheering, jeering, back-and-forth jawing and waving signs, all of which flub or break the council’s rules of decorum. Disruptions in late 2024 inspired the council to hold meetings only online at the start of the new year. In April, pro-Palestine demonstrators interrupted a meeting three times and claimed their concerns went unheard. Each instance led to a brief recess for the council, and the third prompted the council chambers to be cleared and closed to the public so that the meeting could finish.Councilmembers Tara Winer and Mark Wallach, both of whom are Jewish, have also been called “Zionazis” by protesters. Zionazi is a portmanteau of Zionist and Nazi. Winer has suggested giving councilmembers brief opportunities to respond to comments. Currently, councilmembers generally cannot address open comments until the end of the meeting.

“The current atmosphere during open comment is actually discouraging public participation,” Winer previously wrote in an email to the Daily Camera. “ … Community members who want to speak on local issues are met with an intimidating environment — people yelling, cursing, and creating chaos. Several have told me they won’t return to open comment because they felt scared and unwelcome.”

Lauren Folkerts, mayor pro-tem, suggested in a Wednesday message to the hotline that open comments could be moved to 5:30 p.m., followed by a recess and the meeting resuming at 6:30 p.m. Mayor Aaron Brockett also endorsed this idea.

In May, councilmember Matt Benjamin suggested moving open comments to the end of meetings.

Folkerts also suggested that the council “consistently address hate speech and dehumanizing remarks immediately after a speaker has finished,” according to her email.

She also supported some of the council’s current rules for commenters deemed unruly — a temporary suspension from in-person attendance, but still allowed to speak virtually.

Speer posed that Boulder take some cues from the Denver City Council, which allocates a 30-minute window for all public comments and only allows someone to speak once every 90 days. Speer didn’t endorse those specific parameters but did say that she sees merit in those concepts.

The next open comment at a Boulder City Council meeting won’t be until July 24. That’s because the council voted 7-2 to eliminate open comments from the June 5 meeting, the first after the antisemitic Pearl Street Mall attack, which the public was not allowed to attend due to “safety concerns,” city manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde said at the time. The council is on recess for much of July.

A statewide trend

The Boulder City Council is far from the state’s only government entity to have its proceedings thrown off by animated public commenters.

The Aurora City Council temporarily eliminated public comments and in-person meetings in June, and is currently being sued over the fact. The council made the change because of ongoing public outcry over a city SWAT officer shooting and killing Kilyn Lewis, an unarmed Black man.

The Englewood School Board voted in May 2024 to restrict public comments at its meeting to only those with connections to the school district. That, too, led to protests.

And the Weld County Commissioners in March 2024 eliminated public comments on all matters not on that meeting’s agenda.

Colorado’s open meetings law does not explicitly protect public comments, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition notes.