Meeting regulars gave mixed reviews to a proposal from City Clerk Robin Altman to change the way she records the business of the Crescent City Council.

Altman asked councilors Monday to allow her to transition from the current practice of providing a detailed summary of the meetings, including what was said during the public comment period, to taking action minutes.

“Action minutes focus primarily on the business conducted and the formal actions taken by the City Council,” she said, providing examples from Eureka, Blue Lake, Fortuna and Arcata on how they approach meeting minutes. “Rather than summarizing discussions in detail, action minutes document the agenda items that are being considered, motions and seconds and voting results. In addition, the action minutes will include any direction given to staff and other formal action taken by the Council.”

Altman pointed to the city’s YouTube channel as a good source for those who want to know what was said during City Council meetings. 

But while some members of the public urged councilors to rely on the technology that’s available for efficiency and objectivity, others said action minutes would omit context that’s necessary for the community to know what’s being considered. 

Crescent City Council candidate Roger Gitlin acknowledged that while some people use the public comment period to vent, others are using it to ask their elected officials to fix something.

“Let’s say someone from the audience says, ‘We’d like you to change the minutes from evening to daytime.’ When their three minutes is up, where does that go? Where does that comment go?” Gitlin asked rhetorically. “It goes to you the mayor or whoever’s in charge, perhaps the city manager under the direction of the mayor, to determine if that’s going to be a future agenda item. Am I misunderstanding this?”

Councilors ultimately asked their city clerk to model their meeting minutes on Blue Lake’s. In addition to providing a breakdown of what the City Council voted on and the direction councilors gave to staff, the minutes would include a brief description about what they said, according to Altman. The minutes would also include a brief description about statements made by city staff, including the city attorney and city manager.

For public comments, the minutes would have a list of who spoke unless the speaker didn’t provide a name, according to Altman. But the minutes wouldn’t include a summary of what was said.

“I love the opportunity for our community members to come to this podium,” the Crescent City clerk said, adding that when she was a deputy city clerk in 2009 she recorded minutes that were 10 pages long. “It’s not easy doing public comment, it’s not easy doing public speaking, and for somebody to leave their home and come down here and speak to our representatives, to speak to what is important to them, is incredibly important.”

Following Gitlin’s comment, Crescent City Mayor Isaiah Wright said that City Council directives are often based on public testimony. 

“For instance, I wrote down three things I was going to bring up based on public comment from earlier — about signage and feeding wildlife,” Wright said. “I think each Council member can bring back whatever they want to bring back before us to see if we can’t get a new item on the agenda.”