A RESOLUTION revising certain General Rules and Procedures of the Seattle City Council; amending Attachment 1 of Resolution 31639, Section XI.D.
Please report the full council agenda item to Resolution 316 59 revising certain general rules and procedures of the Seattle City Council. Amending Chapter one a Resolution 316 39, Section 11 point D. Thank you very much. And this resolution and I'm going to move to a minute. In a moment, I'll introduce it. First is a resolution to change some fairly simple rules in the city hall in terms of court decorum. They're pretty common sensical. And I'll just sort of walk you through it, as I did this morning for those following the issue. We wanted to make the rules very clear that anyone just attempting to delay the public comment period by absolutely doing nothing but staring at us for blowing their nose or being silent without any discernible message that that is according to the law, can be construed as disruptive. And so that's not an encouraged or acceptable conduct here. We also want to make sure that any individual that or preventing another person from commenting by telling them to get out of their seat or any way intimidating them is also not acceptable according to our rules . We want to make sure that, again, another section that warnings can be given, but based on prior conduct as well, we can give a warning based on the prior conduct and by that we mean earlier in the week or just a pattern of behavior can be the basis for a warning. And then the other change is that we would like if if in fact, first of all, let me back up through the the formal rules allowed for the both the council president or the chair of the committee to give the warning or impose a sanction. This change allows any council member in any capacity participating in that meeting to be able to exercise that same authority. And then if in fact, the person wants to appeal, that they will do that at the next regularly scheduled full council meeting. Again, these have been approved by law and they think we think that it makes sense without offending anyone's right to free speech or constitutional speech and all of the liberties that we want to protect. I want to make a. An amendment to it just because we can do it at the committee. Describe what that amendment amendment is. It's basically the last part that I talked about, the appeal process being to the full council. Central staff pointed out that the prior rules allowed an appeal to the next committee. So there might have been an exclusion of the Parks Committee and the person appeals to the Transportation Committee. So we didn't think that made sense. We wanted to clean that up, and that's what the amendment is about. So first, I would like to move to amend Resolution 31659, which is the resolution just read Section 1d6 by substituting subsection six with a proposed language amended language provided on the agenda. And again, that's the appeal parts. They're second okay. Those in favor of the amendment please vote i. I those opposed vote no. The motion carries and the amendment passes. Another portion I do want to point out to my colleagues is unfortunately and this is the kind of rule that we've initiated or I've initiated that somewhat, one could argue, restricts free speech. To some extent. What we're more interested in is encouraging free speech and encouraging people that don't have the ability to come down here at 2:00 or during our committee. So we're going to do some more work on how we can encourage and get more public comment. These rules are really designed to make sure anyone down here that comes are not intimidated by some of the craziness that you see, some of the hate speech that I see coming down here. That to me is quite disgusting. So we're going to do more work on trying to encourage free speech, and I thank you for their support on this resolution. Are there any further comments? Okay. I move to adopt resolution 31659 as amended their second. Any more comments? Those in favor of adopting the resolution as amended? Vote i. I. Those opposed vote no. The motion carries the resolutions adopted as amended, and the chair will sign it. Thank you. Report of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.