Mayor Welch Reverses Ban On Citizen 'Time Yielding' at City Council Meetings

 Former Mayor John Bauters' Tight Control on Citizen Free Speech Lifted by Mayor Courtney Welch (a little)

Citizens Now Allowed to Yield Their Time to Other Citizen Speakers

Mayor Courtney Welch
Tuesday's action means more rights for citizens
addressing their government.  Accountability is
increased (slightly).

In a rare opening up of government accountability, Mayor Courtney Welch announced Tuesday she is reversing a former ban on citizen ‘time yielding’ at City Council meetings.  As is the case in most cities, Emeryville citizens will now be allowed to yield their (two minute) speaking time to another citizen, thereby doubling the speaking time of those granted the extra time, up to four minutes.  

While Mayor Welch did not indicate she would permit more than one citizen to yield their time per go as many other cities in the East Bay do, this expansion of citizen free speech in Emeryville is nonetheless unprecedented.  Over the last decade plus and picking up speed under the tenure of former Mayor John Bauters, citizens wishing to engage with their government by offering up public comment at Council meetings faced nothing but increasing constraint.

The time yield concept was tested Tuesday by members of the staff, who’s union; SEIU, was expressing their disfavor over a City Hall planned 6% roll back on their pay when a staff member called out from the gallery, “I yield my time to the speaker” who’s two minutes speaking time had run out.  It was an outburst that would have brought the gavel down during the time of Mayor John Bauters.  Instead of dropping the gavel, Ms Welch calmly acquiesced and then granted it again to another SEIU member later in the meeting.  And, because all citizens must be treated fairly and equally by the government, citizens are now granted the right to yield their time at Emeryville City Council meetings.

In Emeryville, mayors are given the power to grant or forbid the yielding of public comment time and also the number of minutes citizens are allowed to speak.  California law requires a minimum one minute per citizen for each agenda item but most cities grant three minutes.  Commonly, mayors will lower the speaking time if there are large numbers of speakers.

Former Mayor John Bauters
Not a fan of accountability, Mr Bauters moved to constrain
citizen's ability to speak at City Council meetings making it 
less free than any other time in more than 40 years.

The new increase in ability for citizens to speak to their government in Emeryville is rare indeed.  Twenty years ago, speaking time for public comments was five minutes and multiple citizens could yield their time to speakers at the podium for each agenda item.  This was chipped away at over the years.  The speaking time was first lowered to three minutes and then down to two minutes by Mayor Bauters.  The ability for citizens to yield time was also then taken away by Mayor Bauters.  So draconian were the anti-free speech policies at City Hall by the end of Mayor Bauters tenure, Emeryville had the ill fortune of having the harshest constraints on citizen engagement of all neighboring cities.  Mayor Welch’s increase in Emeryville citizen's free speech rights, incremental though it may be, reverses the nearly two decade long slide.  

Mayor Bauters To Step Down, Give Reins to Vice Mayor: Two Years of Subterfuge Revealed

 Our Mayor is Loudly a Progressive

A Closer Look Reveals a More Complicated Politics

Opinion

As our consecutive back-to-back termed mayor, John Bauters, prepares to step down to allow our vice mayor Courtney Welch assume the Emeryville mayoralty, now seems a good time to take stock of the politics of this loquacious, globe trotting, camera smitten leader of ours.  The two year mayor of Emeryville as it turns out, is well known outside our little town.  Notably, not since the fall of the corrupt chief of police John LaCoste back in the 1980s, has Emeryville had a political leader so well known around the nation until the rise of Council member cum mayor John Bauters.  The vehicle for this has been Mr Bauters’ energetic penchant for self promotion.

Emeryville Mayor John Bauters
He recently told a throng of striking Oakland 
workers he supports labor over corporations. 
Conveniently, he didn't tell them
his actual record on that.

A perfunctory gaze at the politics of the quixotic mayoralty of Mr Bauters, could lead one to believe he would be placed solidly on the left wing side of the political spectrum.  Indeed, he has often directly stated as much.  He is starring in more than 20 YouTube videos proudly wearing his progressivism on his sleeve.  But a more critical look reveals a more complicated reality.  

Mayor Bauters came out publicly against building more parks for Emeryville but many might be surprised to learn that our liberal mayor has quietly foreclosed on the idea of establishing an ethics commission for City Hall.  Amid a growing culture of nastiness on the Council and under increasing pressure from the public, Mr Bauters relented recently and joined his Council colleagues in a vote to allow a ceremonial albeit toothless ‘code of ethics’ for City Council members and City Staff.  But he vigorously opposed a more constraining citizen’s ethics commission as other neighboring cities have done.  

Mayor Bauters seems to be saying the government can be trusted to investigate itself and the citizens should simply trust them.  When the Tattler recently inquired about the establishment of an ethics commission, Mayor Bauters was unequivocal: “No” he said tersely.  This is an authoritarian, illiberal view of governance.

On the housing front, Mayor Bauters (and Vice Mayor Welch) has led the Council majority in fierce support of a corporate vision of 100% rental units for Emeryville, in direct defiance of our General Plan.  Emeryville has for more than a decade, exceeded the market rate housing recommendations of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), making cries about not enough market rate housing from the housing developer lobbying group YIMBY, ring hollow.  Nonetheless, the Mayor and Vice Mayor have both followed the straight and narrow pro-corporate developer YIMBY path although Mr Bauters HAS pushed for more affordable housing.  Notably, he led a drive to pass Measure C, a voter backed, taxpayer funded $50 million affordable housing bond in 2018 without objection from developers.

Bike boulevards in Emeryville were never
supposed to have more than 3000 vehicle
trips per day, until Mayor Bauters said 
a resounding NO to that.  

Mayor Bauters spins a yarn about his progressive worldview but what’s telling is on two conspicuous issues, biking and labor issues, he is the polar opposite of what he tells the world.  That has a Trumpian ethos about it. On bicycling, Mr Bauters has used his entire term on the City Council subverting our bike boulevard system, putting bikers in harm's way.  Bike boulevards are supposed to be corridors where cars are allowed but bikes are preferred.  Emeryville pledged to do that in 2012 (before Mr Bauters got on our Council), by limiting the number of vehicles sharing the boulvards with bicyclists to less than 3000 per day.  The City of Emeryville officially does not recommend more than 3000 vehicle trips per day because it is too dangerous for bikers and this has been in our Bike Plan. But the business community pushes back against limiting the number of cars and that’s who Mayor Bauters has been listening to.  Because Mr Bauters has been so effective in lobbying in favor of the business community, Emeryville has not limited the number of cars to less than 3000.  In fact, the City has tremendously INCREASED the number of cars using our bike boulvards since Bauters moved to overturn our Bike Plan.

Being narcissistic, Mayor Bauters doesn’t take a principled stance on just about anything, the evanescent and shifting opinions of the fickle public being his conspicuous go to place.  Recently, as public opinion about labor unions has shifted to a more pro-union stance, Mr Bauters has been all over that.  So whereas before, he was vehemently anti-labor, now Mayor Bauters has used a bullhorn to support labor….literally he’s taken up a bullhorn.  Back in 2015 when Emeryville businesses cried over our new Minimum Wage Ordinance, a law written before he got on the Council, John Bauters led a 2018 drive to roll back wages delineated by the ordinance, leaving the working poor the working poor.  A labor petition drive of Emeryville voters ultimately stopped Mr Bauters' anti-worker move.  

But that was then, now he says he LOVES labor.  Last week our Mayor, during a workers' strike at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, gave a full throated, bullhorn assisted trashing of corporate greed and pledged his fealty to labor.  That’s just the way he rolls he told the crowd of striking workers, always in support of the little guy.  Later, he proudly told his 38,000 Twitter followers (X) all about it on his ‘Mayor John’ site.  He told them, “It is wholly unacceptable for a greedy corporation like Kaiser to rely on frontline healthcare workers to lead us through a pandemic and then turn its back on fair wages and basic dignity”.  He failed to mention he did the same thing as Kaiser did to workers when he tried to overturn Emeryville’s Minimum Wage Ordinance.  Did it slip his mind?  Maybe.  It’s hard to know the mind of a narcissist.

So now Mayor Bauters will become just regular old Councilman Bauters (unless he goes for a third term as mayor....warning Emeryville citizens, it could happen).   Next up, the corporate Democrat Courtney Welch and her illiberal, anti-democratic drama train.  Her constituents that disagree with her or try to hold her to account, all “fuck boys” in her estimation, likely will have some fireworks to look forward to.  Maybe the new Code of Ethics will constrain the pugilistic Mayor Welch.  Don’t bet on it.