Mayor Trice talks of new city manager’s thoughts on combining remarks at start of sessions
On July 6, as the Sarasota city commissioners were wrapping up their inaugural meeting with new City Manager Karie Friling, Mayor Debbie Trice raised an issue that she and her colleagues agreed will be placed on their Aug. 3 meeting agenda: how to streamline the board’s business during its regular sessions.
Noting that she already had talked with Friling about the topic, Trice said that one of Friling’s proposals was “moving public comment” — unless it was for a public hearing — to the beginning of each meeting, “so people would say, “ ‘OK, be there at 9 o’clock, and then I can leave.’ ”
Trice added, “I was going to suggest that the easy part to start with would be Consent Agendas.” That could be a discussion for their July 20 meeting, she pointed out: “whether to require all public comment on Consent Agenda [business] to be during the initial public comment period,” instead of the mayor’s calling up speakers as the commissioners address each of the two Consent Agendas. (Those agendas primarily deal with routine decisions.)
The Citizens Input Concerning City Topics long has been scheduled during the meetings just after presentations, such as recognition of organizations and employee achievements. Then, as the board members reach each other item on the agenda, the public has been allowed to offer remarks on those business matters, regardless of whether the items are public hearings.
Responding to Trice on July 6, Commissioner Liz Alpert said, “I would just go ahead and include it all,” not just comments on the Consent Agendas, at the start of the meetings. “It eliminates people having to sit here all day long, waiting for [their] item to come up.”
Friling nodded as Alpert made that point.
If any of them choose to stay for the discussion in which they are interested, to hear “how we deliberate on it and how we vote, that’s up to them,” Alpert said.
“But I think that would be a really good idea,” she told her colleagues: “to take all the comments at the beginning for whatever is on the agenda.”
“I see pros and cons of that,” Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch told her colleagues. “I would not not allow them to speak during the agenda item,” Ahearn-Koch continued, “because often,” between city Planning Board hearings and community workshops, for examples, and the City Commission’s addressing an issue, “Things change.”
Moreover, Ahearn-Koch said, during presentations, something may be proposed “that we had no idea … was going to be presented.”
Therefore, she pointed out, “The public may want to be able to comment on those items [after hearing the presentations].”
At times, she indicated, people may decide not to speak, because of changes; at other times, they may think, “ ’I’m gonna address this because that’s newly presented to us.’ ”
Ahearn-Koch also pointed out to her colleagues, “I think we’ve always allowed people, if they wanted to, to speak to us.” For example, she said, if a person wished to address an upcoming agenda item but needed to leave before the commissioners reached that part of the agenda, that person has been allowed to make his or her remarks out of the order of the agenda.
“We’ve always allowed that,” she emphasized.
“We have allowed it,” Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich concurred. She herself had made remarks in such situations before she was elected to the commission in November 2024, she added.
Instead of continuing to exchange thoughts on the topic that day, Commissioner Alpert suggested, “Why don’t we have the discussion when it comes before us?”
At that point during the discussion, City Auditor and Clerk Shayla Griggs explained that, because of the city policy regarding the deadline for the release of upcoming City Commission agendas, a discussion about changing the protocols for public comments should wait for the first August agenda.
“I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on the city manager to have something to us by tomorrow,” Griggs stressed of the deadline for publication of the July 20 agenda.
Mayor Trice laughed before she said, “I did want to bring it up today so that we wouldn’t have to wait too much longer.”
Then Trice added, “So Commissioner Alpert is recommending everything [at the start of the meetings, and] Commissioner Ahearn-Koch is recommending still allowing [for comments as the agenda items are addressed].”
Her thinking, Trice continued, was that perhaps no comments should be allowed as part of the board’s discussions of Unfinished Business and New Businessitems.
Trice also acknowledged, laughingly again, that, when she was talking with City Manager Friling about changing the protocols, she told Friling, “ ‘I might not remember the comments from 9 o’clock in the morning when we get to 4 o’clock in the afternoon.’ ”
Trice did suggest that Deputy City Auditor and Clerk Lori Rivers could sort all of the public comment cards turned in before each meeting begins, so the board members would hear the remarks on each specific agenda item as a group.
“That’s easy,” City Auditor and Clerk Griggs pointed out. Rivers “kind of does that anyway.”
Griggs then recommended that the commissioners allow Friling to present to them a proposal for reorganizing how the public comments are handled, prior to their launching a discussion of the issue.
“Give her the opportunity to put it on the first agenda in August,” Trice responded.