Downey will continue accepting emails as public comment

DOWNEY – The Downey City Council still plans to allow written correspondence to be addressed in their meetings at the end of the pandemic.

Prior to the pandemic, meeting rules operated under the assumption that residents who wished to address the council on an issue would physically attend council meetings.

However, ever since meetings were forced to close to the public, participants were allowed the opportunity to either email their comments prior to the meeting and have them read into the record, or to call in while the meeting was in progress.

Though still currently under emergency orders which allow for such participation, some questions have arisen as to if the council would still accept emails and phone calls during their meetings once the pandemic has concluded.

Councilman Mario Trujillo was wary of what he described as “abuse” by some callers.

“With the pandemic, we learned that the public could access our council meetings through technology; they could communicate with us, they could call in,” said Trujillo. “Some residents of the city wanted to know if we were going to continue to allow that, to develop rules that would allow members of the public to call in their comments.

“I thought we would bring it up for discussion to see what are the current rules, and do we want to do that. There’s so much abuse that was obvious by the amount of people calling in. It’s sad that some of those people are probably going to ruin it for others.”

Though he didn’t mention them specifically by name, Trujillo was likely referring to regular council antagonists Armando Herman and Wayne Spindler, who regularly call multiple times during a meeting and try to trick and confuse the council by disguising their voices.

Councilman Sean Ashton expressed concern over the elimination of accepting emails for the meeting.

“When we first opened up again a month or two ago, it was kind of said, ‘We’re not going to do emails anymore.’ No, I don’t get that,” said Ashton. “Usually when people want to complain about something, or do something, or say something to their city representatives, usually the first thing is I’m going to come to city council and talk to them. Obviously, some people can’t be here at 10 p.m. in the evening or later to address some of those concerns.”

While residents always have the option to email their representatives at any time for any issue, the issue at hand was if public comment emails to the city clerk would be read – or at the very least accounted for – in each meeting’s official record.

Ultimately, the council decided to keep emails as a viable option for the public at their meetings, while leaving whether they are read or merely tallied (in approval or opposition of an agenda item) to the discretion of the mayor.

Submitted emails will also be made public online.

Trujillo still encouraged residents to email the council whenever there was an issue, and not to necessarily “wait for a council meeting.”

“We tend to be good about responding,” said Trujillo. “We try to make ourselves accessible at all times to people.”

In addition, Ashton requested that the city broadcast meetings over Zoom in addition to YouTube.

“I know we’ve had meetings where we’ve had to wait because something’s been going on with YouTube,” said Ashton. “My whole thing is I want to give people at least access to say ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing here, so watch us.’

“If the YouTube isn’t working very well, then maybe this can be a backup, or have the YouTube be a backup and have (Zoom) be the main thing. I think having both is a good idea.”

According to city officials, both Zoom and YouTube would be viable options whether used concurrently or separate. Residents who watch on Zoom will not be able to participate through the platform.