Ward 8 City Council Candidate David Cutting

City Code Section 1-204(c), as copied below, is anti-democracy, and the new members, hopefully including this writer, must vote to repeal it.

A public comment period is conducted prior to each regular session of the city council from 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.. Any person wishing to address the council shall make such request to the city clerk by noon on Wednesday prior to the regular session and shall submit their name and the topic of said comments. Each person shall be allowed a maximum of five minutes to speak during the comment period. No public comments concerning any zoning amendment to be considered by the city council at such regular session shall be received during this period.

We must encourage, not restrict, resident participation in our city government. It should suffice for persons to sign up for comments between 7:15 and 7:30, as they enter the meeting, and to do so without stating a topic. The council should hear the five-minute comments, in the order in which people signed in, at the end of the regular session. This will help ensure that the public will have the opportunity to address items of current concern, rather than stale issues that may already be resolved.

The current council chambers, and on-site parking, are not ample for enough residents to attend, especially when topics of major interest, such as public safety and taxation, are on the agenda. However, rather than wasting taxpayer dollars on a proposed new city council building, an enormous expense which would receive only occasional use, we must consider appropriate space that is currently available. The former Gateway Hospital on Madison should be perfect, with its large parking lot and large open areas, including the former cafeteria. Another possibility, for occasional use, is the large meeting room on the second floor of the Montgomery County Health Department on Pageant Lane.

The election process for six new council seats every two years must include opportunities for the voters to learn about the candidates, so they may vote intelligently. This should include, as a minimum, one question and answer session, to which all qualified candidates are invited. The questioning should be by a neutral entity, perhaps from Austin Peay State University, and the candidates should not have advance access to the questions. The venue should be large enough to hold all interested voters, and have ample parking. Appropriate sites could include the former Gateway Hospital on Madison, the Media Center at Austin Peay State University, or the large meeting room on the second floor of the Montgomery County Health Department on Pageant Lane. To reach even more voters, we should televise the question and answer session. When we elect our city councilors based solely on who spent more money on yard signs and billboards, we do not necessarily achieve good government.

Clarksville’s new election sign ordinance, requiring $25 permits for each sign on commercial property, places challengers without name recognition at a disadvantage. We must repeal this ordinance, designed to keep incumbents in office, as it mocks democracy. Written permission of the property owner should be the only requirement for short-term election signs on commercial property.

Most important to democracy, whenever the city government feels it has the need or the right to take real property from residents, whether owners or tenants, it must include those residents in all deliberations affecting their housing. In no event should the city government seize private real property without first ascertaining that all displaced residents have adequate replacement housing, with which they are well satisfied.

To implement these progressive reforms, we voters must change the current membership of the Clarksville City Council. This includes replacing one of my opponents, the incumbent Ward 8 councilor.

For some inexplicable reason, knowledge of parliamentary procedure seems to be in short supply at recent city council meetings. The dubious conduct of meetings and voting sessions has caused some citizens to raise a ‘Point of Order’ regarding the April 24th executive and special called voting sessions. Additional review of the printed and published agendas for those meetings brings a serious question to mind.

Questionable agenda ‘order of business’?

Since the city of Clarksville utilizes Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised as its parliamentary authority, citizens must question how the agenda for any of its public meetings can contain a public comment segment AFTER the adjournment of the meeting. By all generally understood interpretations of Robert’s Rules of Order and every other parliamentary authority manual, adjournment is the conclusion of the called gathering, the point at which all agenda business and discussion has been addressed and decided. How then is the public supposed to impart its input upon the deliberative body that is city council, when the meeting is no longer in session and the people’s representatives are released to leave the gathering?

Why all this fuss, you, the reader, may ask? Simply put, when was the last time you attended a meeting, of any kind, where at the conclusion, speakers came forward to address the assembly? Small groups may well gather to socialize or ask questions among themselves, but no one goes to the podium to put questions to the group or have statements recorded for the record. Indeed, no input on the record can be made after a meeting is adjourned! That’s one of the harsh realities of adjournment — all official business is ended.

Above-(Images of the Council during recent session)

So then, just how is the public suppose to inform its deliberating body of its concerns and issues when its allotted time to do so comes after the conclusion of the meeting? Yet the agenda for both City Council’s executive and voting sessions of April 24th listed public comment periods after adjournment. It must be noted that at the adjournment of the voting session, the validity of which itself is questionable, council members left. The executive session had never been adjourned. There was no attempt to entertain public comment by the council leadership. Thus, even by its own agenda, the city council failed to follow the order of business it promised the public. Was this by design?

Parliamentary Law resources available

It would seem that our city council is lacking in understanding some aspects of parliamentary law and procedure. April being Parliamentary Law Emphasis Month makes this shortcoming all the more poignant. Clearly some guidance in proper parliamentary law and procedure is needed by our city council and government. Does the city possess a copy of the Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised 10th edition, manual? Perhaps a referral inquiry to the state legislature’s parliamentary advisory group, TAP- Tennessee Association of Parliamentarians, or the State Attorney General’s Office might provide clarity on the matter.

One thing is certain- the public was ill-served by an agenda that placed its opportunity to address its elected deliberative body at the conclusion of its meeting. Such practices undermine the people’s trust in its government to the detriment of all. That oversight should never happen again. It never should have happened at all.