Move to put citizen input before consent agenda vote fails again
Citizens input will stay at the tail end of Cape Coral City Council meetings with no input earmarked before the elected board votes on its consent agenda.
Council rejected on Wednesday adding a second input period prior its consent agenda vote — the primary sticking point to the agenda change previously made.
The discussion was brought forward by Councilmember Rachel Kaduk, who wanted to add public input before the consent agenda where Council votes on matters as a package unless a member of the elected board pulls an item for discussion.
“An allowance of citizen’s input on anything regarding the agenda,” she said. “They don’t have the opportunity to chime in on that if we don’t give them a public input.”
Mayor John Gunter said five minutes into the meeting, Council was again having the same discussion on a decided matter.
“For me, I cannot support moving forward having two separate citizen’s input. This Council made the decision,” he said.
Kaduk said when they made the change to add citizen’s input to the end of the meeting, they also changed the time the meeting began.
“That is why I brought this back again – give the opportunity to talk about the consent agenda,” she said.
The motion failed with Gunter and council members Bill Steinke, Dr. Derrick Donnell, Laurie Lehmann, and Keith Long opposing.
The conversation was brought up again during the unfinished business portion of the agenda.
“I thought that the change that we made and implemented has been a good one,” Steinke said. “If citizens have an issue with something on the consent agenda, they can bring it to a council member, and council members can pull the item. I don’t see the need to have two citizen’s input.”
Councilmember Jennifer Nelson-Lastra, who brought up the discussion last month of having two citizen’s input times, made the motion again to keep the one at the end of the meeting, and add another before the consent agenda.
She said by adding the citizen’s input prior to the consent agenda they are giving citizens the opportunity to speak.
“The way it was before, I didn’t think it was a problem the way we were doing things,” Gunter said. “As a City Council we make sure that we make decisions and we continue with how the decisions were made. (When we) go back and forth it makes us look foolish, honestly.”
He said citizens can send in an e-comment, and Council can bring a topic back for discussion, and make a motion for reconsideration.
“In my personal opinion, we tried to fix a problem that wasn’t there,” Gunter said.
After the discussion, Nelson-Lastra made the motion to amend Council procedures and add a 30-minute citizen’s input prior to the consent agenda, while leaving the second 60-minute citizen’s input at the end.
That motion failed with Steinke, Donnell, Gunter, Long, and Councilmember Joe Kilraine opposing.
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