No matter how you look at the special full Board of Supervisors' meeting today, including the unusual starting time of 5:15 pm, it's quite a unique situation extending also to the fact that public comment is item one. This needs to be an occurrence at every full board meeting!
Even this cynic is impressed with this act of democratizing City Hall, if only for one board meeting, to such a degree I sent this letter to the Supervisors and various folks in City govt:
Dear Members of the Board of Supervisors,
Thanks for providing the City with the miracle of allowing general public comment at the start of your special meeting today, as stated on the agenda:
Myself, and other good govt watchdogs, have long implored you to set a fixed time for public comment at your Tuesday meetings, especially for working folks who don't have hours of time on an afternoon workday to wait around for public comment, but our pleas have not led to change.
Over in Berkeley, their City Council takes public comment at the start of meetings, for about ten minutes, allowing at least a few folks the chance to speak, and returning to more public comment later.
I suggest you, and Jane Kim particularly if she wants to distinguish herself from her senate race opponent, look to Berkeley as a way to improve making San Francisco's BOS a body with better best practices for public comment.
Check this out from the Berkeley council's site:
"Public Comment on Non-Agenda Matters: Persons will be selected by lottery to address matters not on the Council agenda. If five or fewer persons submit speaker cards for the lottery, each person selected will be allotted two minutes each. If more than five persons submit speaker cards for the lottery, up to ten persons will be selected to address matters not on the Council agenda and each person selected will be allotted one minute each. Persons wishing to address the Council on matters not on the Council agenda during the initial ten-minute period for such comment, must submit a speaker card to the City Clerk in person at the meeting location and prior to commencement of that meeting. The remainder of the speakers wishing to address the Council on non-agenda items will be heard at the end of the agenda."
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