ANALYSIS: TorC Commissioners answer Sierra County Sun on limiting public comment

by Kathleen Sloan | September 25, 2019
4 min read
The Truth or Consequences City Commission changed how public comment works a few months ago and the Sierra County Sun sent each board member an email, none responding. Two commissioners did address the change, however, at the Sept. 25 meeting, without naming the paper, and unfortunately not answering the core question. 

Public comment is now allowed only at the first meeting of the month, not the second. On the same day as the second meeting, the Commission has given City Manager Morris Madrid the authority to meet with residents at city chambers. People gather at 6 p.m. and wait while each takes a turn meeting one-on-one with Madrid. The Commission claims this is equivalent to or even better than public comment held at 9 a.m. at the first meeting, because residents aren’t limited to three minutes at the microphone. 

The Madrid meeting is titled a “town hall” on the agenda, although residents can’t hear the issues brought forward and can’t learn of and share information as fellow-community members that are typical of town halls. Nor can they hear what remedy Madrid is enacting or proposing, if any.  

The Sierra County Sun asked the Commission two main questions. How is addressing the city manager equivalent to addressing an elected official? How is one-on-one discussion equivalent to raising the issue publicly? 

The paper noted Madrid is not an elected official, he is an employee. The First Amendment gives citizens the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” which is the City Commission in this case, traditionally addressed at regular public meetings during public comment. 

It is critical to allow residents to address the Commission as a sitting body, since they only have power as a body, not as individuals. They may only meet, communicate and act on issues as a body at public meetings. In a mayor-council form of government, such as Elephant Butte’s, petitioning the mayor would make sense, but not in a city-manager/commission form of government, such as Truth or Consequences’.

Madrid is not gathering and then relaying the petitions or grievances to the Commission and then getting their direction on what action is to be taken. Whitehead, during the April 27 meeting, said Madrid would bring all items brought to him back to them, but she stopped his report at the Sept. 10 meeting. He has not relayed petitions or the solutions he’s enacted since the policy was changed over two months ago. 

The public sharing of information has been cut and Madrid is acting independently from the Commission’s direction, which can only be given as a body in public. Madrid can edit or ignore or redress grievances as he sees fit, as an employee, not as the elected body of the people. 

Whitehead and Clark indicated Madrid handling petitions is an improvement. Some residents get up to 15 minutes with Madrid, Whitehead said, an improvement over three minutes at the mic.  

Clark said some of the problems are “administrative” and can’t be addressed by one board member, only by the whole board, and she feels it is better to have Madrid be the contact “instead of [a member of the public] speaking for three minutes [at the mic during public comment] and nothing happening.” 

But that is exactly the point. The board, as a body, given Clark’s admission, wasn’t answering the people’s petitions. Then and now it still isn’t answering petitions. It has neglected or abdicated a lot of their authority and given it to Madrid. He isn’t the people’s representative. 

Whitehead has said public comment “is a privilege,” repeating it at the Sept. 25 meeting. She also said there have been no complaints about the switch. Given that Madrid handles most of the petitions, complaints and issues, it is questionable whether he would relay any complaints. He is employed “at will” by the Commission. He has also been given a great deal of power and independent authority, which makes for a pleasanter work environment than being directed by a five-person board.

Clark said she is getting fewer phone calls, which she believes is due to Madrid addressing petitions. Given the lack of action the Commission took in the past, she is probably correct. But the lessening of calls may also be due to the Commission’s change in policy. It was an official handing-over of power to Madrid. Why call an elected official who does not act and does not want to act? 

Disallowing public comment chills public participation and contention, which may be the point for keeping discussion private with Madrid. Important items have come up on second-meeting agendas that warrant public comment and public airing. 

Whitehead did suggest a remedy for no public comment at the second meeting. If there is an item on the agenda on which a member of the public would like to speak, contact the “city,” presumably Madrid, and ask for permission. Again, this gives Madrid the authority to decide if a member of the public may be heard. 

Under the new public comment policy, the city-manager/commission form of government has become more nearly a city-manager/city-manager form of government, with many more decisions being made essentially behind closed doors by one person instead of elected officials in the sunshine. 

TAGS: |
author
Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
Share this:
HAVE YOU SEEN?

Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

Scroll to Top