Proclamations and introductions at the beginning could also be severely curtailed. This meeting had only one, but sometimes these items frontload the meeting by at least half an hour.

This meeting had quite a few public hearings. Presumably that was partly because of a queue from Planning Commission. That will bulk up a meeting, especially if Tom Partridge asserts the right to speak at each one.

I would not propose shortening either the public comment or council discussion in order to shorten the meeting.

Matt, when you describe structuring a process so that the council isn’t forced to work until 2 a.m., I’m understanding that as an interest in looking at the logistics of meeting management and trying to address meeting length from that perspective. I think that an inherent challenge in that approach is the need to balance: (1) the public interest in unfettered commentary; and (2) the reasonable expectation that the council will vote on the matter the same night as the public comment is entertained. If I were in charge of the “zoning regulations” for public comment, I would seek to discourage speakers from building lot-line-to-lot-line – that is, using the entire three minutes allotted. [Spoiler alert: I'm not in charge of that.]

But the current “reserved time” system limits public comment at the start of the meeting to just 10 people, for three minutes apiece. That creates pressure for “dense development” on your three-minute parcel, because it’s prime real estate. It’s reasonable to maximize the return on your three-minute parcel by building it lot-line-to-lot-line. Under the rules, you don’t create opportunity for additional people to speak by being brief: It’s 10 people – whether they each speak for 15 seconds or for three minutes. In my view, some of the most effective public commentary in my 4.5 years covering the city council has been the briefest. [Oh, yes, I do appreciate the irony of that statement coming from a guy whose publication traffics in tl;dr articles.]

But public speakers do not have to file a site plan for their comments with the likes of me. And every single time, I will fall on the side of defending someone’s right to use their entire allotted time to speak. I think that much of the public commentary that’s rendered is not very effective oratory, and wrote a column years ago describing what would be more effective. (It was basically the idea that you formulate a fair question and ask it, as a “journalist-citizen.”) But ultimately, effectiveness is in the ear of the speaker, and there’s no requirement that the comment be effective by anyone’s standard.

By way of wrapping up this comment, I’m not willing to blame the length of the meeting on just the long public commentary. The moratorium was before the council for the third time on March 18 – due to postponements on which the council did not deliberate. The DDA ordinance revisions were postponed for a second time at that meeting. So it’ll appear for the third time on April 1. The council itself has to share a least part of the responsibility for the sheer length of the meeting: When you kick a can down the road as a standard strategy, you can eventually end up with a lot of cans in front of your house.