Is the open comment section at Boulder City Council meetings broken? Some councilmembers think so.

Once simmering tensions at council meetings over the Israel-Hamas war might be nearing a boiling point. An April meeting went into recess three times because of pro-Palestine protesters who were interrupting proceedings. The public was cleared of the council chambers after the third instance so the meeting could finish.

Leading up to that had been months of increasingly tense open comments sections in which pro-Palestine protestors accuse the council, based on investments, of being complicit in the deaths of more than 54,000 people in Gaza. Other commenters, many of whom are Jewish, accuse those protestors of being racist for differentiating anti-Zionism and antisemitism, or accuse them of supporting the terrorist group Hamas, which perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people and has been dubbed the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the holocaust.

City councilmembers have repeatedly said the conflict isn’t relevant to their governmental body and that it’s an impediment on conducting necessary city business.

“The current atmosphere during open comment is actually discouraging public participation,” City councilmember Tara Winer 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.”

These tensions are again in the spotlight in the weeks after the June 1 antisemitic firebombing attack on the Pearl Street Mall which targeted peaceful demonstrators who were calling for Hamas to release the remaining 58 dead and alive Israeli hostages. Safety concerns in the wake of the attack prompted city manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde to close the June 5 in-person council meeting to the public, and a 7-2 vote approved a motion to not hold any open comments during the meeting.

How open comments work

Currently, the city allows for up to 20 people to speak for up to two minutes in-person or virtually during the open comment section on any topic they like. This only applies to regular meetings, which are generally held in-person every other week at the Penfield Tate II Municipal Building.

The public is also welcome to chime in on public hearings, which can be held during regular meetings or the virtual study sessions. Those comments must relate to the topic of the public hearing.

City councilmembers have an opportunity to respond to open comments at the end of the meeting.

Open comments give the public an opportunity to address the council directly on any topic they wish. At times, it can bring certain issues to the council it was not previously aware of. Such was the case when a group of parents packed an April meeting to show support for Sage Programs, a Waldorf-inspired program for homeschooled children that was re-zoned as a school and subsequently closed.

How might open comments change?

In an email survey, city councilmembers Winer and Mark Wallach, along with mayor Aaron Brockett, all expressed interest in adjusting the current open comments format. City councilmember Matt Benjamin also proposed moving the open comment section from the beginning of meetings to the end back in May.

In terms of the remaining councilmembers, Ryan Schuchard didn’t have a comment on the subject and Nicole Speer said she hadn’t had conversations on the subject with her council colleagues. Tina Marquis, Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts and Taishya Adams, who is the most vocally Pro-Palestine councilmember and has been accused of inviting the demonstrators to meetings, did not respond to the Camera’s email survey.

Some restrictions have been placed. Rules of decorum are read before each open comment section, and meeting attendees are asked to bring small signs, not hold them too high in the air, and refrain from comments, cheers or jeers.

Wallach suggested the city adhere to the doctrine of a Limited Public Forum, which would allow for the public to speak to the council but sets limits on what topics can be addressed.

“Under this doctrine, the Council has the right to make certain limitations on what can be addressed at Open Comment, as long as they are viewpoint neutral: no speakers supporting Hamas, then no speakers supporting Israel. And vice versa,” Wallach wrote, adding that his preference would be to limit open comments to anything mentioned in the current or past council agendas, and “perhaps the next (two) upcoming meetings.”

Winer, meanwhile, floated the idea of giving councilmembers the opportunity respond immediately to comments as opposed to at the end of the meetings. Winer suggested limiting responses to one instance per councilmember and to 30 seconds per response.

In a summit on combatting antisemitism last week, Brockett indicated interest in limiting open comments to Boulder residents or people with legitimate business in city affairs.

“While I don’t have a specific set of changes to propose at this time, I do think that changes to open comment need to be made because of the dysfunctional and divisive nature of the open comment period in recent times, and because of how it has often left community members feeling unsafe,” Brockett wrote.

Wallach noted that he’s not in favor of closing down open comments nor is he in favor of moving them to the end of meetings. He said he’s open to limiting open commenters to only Boulder residents.

“I do not feel that any of the potential strategies that I could support would impinge upon the expression of views, other than the views of those who are interested in disrupting our meetings,” Wallach wrote. “But as the saying goes, ‘If it is broke you had better fix it.’ The system we have now requires repair.”