Open letter to INDY
Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2024 at 11:25 PM
Subject: Lockouts at Durham City Hall
To: <jlaidlaw@indyweek.com>, <backtalk@indyweek.com>
Mr. Laidlaw:
Thank you for your April 5th piece on newly restricted access to City Hall.
One thing you may not realize is that the recent practice of locking out citizens seeking to express their views at Durham City Council meetings is not solely a product of the ceasefire demonstrations or crowded budget meetings. The lockouts and rigid enforcement of speaker registration deadlines are consistent with Mayor Leo Williams’ long held discomfort with public engagement generally.
In public hearings Mr. Williams has been highly defensive to citizens questioning his steady support for environmentally ruinous development (if you are not familiar, I will be happy to send you links). For background to Williams’ current repression of public engagement, I recommend you listen to the August 3, 2022, JCCPC discussion of SCAD.
Following a presentation by applicant Jim Anthony, another SCAD proponent claimed there had already been extensive public engagement. Some electeds present pointed out that the so called “public” engagement to date had really been soft presentations for various groups within the development and real estate community. Williams answered with concerning, yet prescient, comments.
Williams (starting at approximately 56 minutes):
We want to be the educators about what is coming to us…
My pet peeve is when vulnerable community members are hungry for information and the opportunity presents itself to be wiped [?] to something totally different. That is not a good service to our community … so we can facilitate that conversation.
…I also want to be really intentional about community engagement and not weaponize it as a method of clogging the process. Because that tends to happen a lot in Durham. Everyone is super smart. And I think everyone knows where I’m getting with that.
… anyone who mischaracterizes and clogs up with community engagement, I will call that out.
Mr. Williams’ comments raise a number of questions:
Who are the “vulnerable community members” to whom Williams refers? Who is he afraid will lead these vulnerable folks astray with mischaracterization? Mischaracterization of what? How does Williams envision the council being “really intentional” about community engagement? What does that mean? What example does he have of community engagement being “weaponized as a method of clogging the process?”
If it’s happened a lot in Durham, when has it happened and who was responsible for the clogging? What does “clogging the process” mean? And what is the “process” that has been clogged? Process for what? Who are the “super smart” people Williams is worried about? In case everyone doesn’t know “where [he was] getting with that,” where was he getting? What is it he is afraid will be mischaracterized and clogged up with community engagement? When and how has he “called that out.”
Now that Leo Williams is mayor, his view of community engagement as being “weaponized” and “clogging the process,” I believe, is what is motivating the changes in public access to City Hall, the chamber, and the podium. As he said, he is being “really intentional” in limiting citizen input, especially from “super smart” Durhamites likely to be well armed with facts, maps, and rational arguments (Things that “clog?”).
In addition to the concerns voiced by citizens interviewed for your article, it’s important to note that even for citizens who make it inside the chambers, the mayor is making it more difficult for them to be heard by insisting that in-person comment cards be turned in before the start of a council meeting. Under previous mayors, citizens wishing to speak could fill out the speakers cards at any time prior to an item being called. This was far more considerate of citizens because public hearings typically don’t start for more than an hour, often two hours, into the meeting. It is a major burden for members of the public to be present in the chamber for hours before their item of interest is called. Citizens wishing to speak must leave home before their kids’ bedtime, maybe before dinner, to be in the Hall before 7 p.m., only to sit through lengthy ceremonial items and the consent agenda as well as other public hearings that do not concern them. Fear of having to spend hours waiting to speak and possibly being excluded from the building discourages people coming downtown to be heard on issues that concern them.
The mayor’s new policies do not foster participatory government in Durham, which may be the point.
I hope you will have occasion to ask Mayor Williams the questions raised above.
Thank you again for your article.
Katie Ross
Save Durham 