.png)
Inside Arvada
Inside Arvada is the City of Arvada’s official podcast where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the City team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community and dig in to conversations about parks and sustainability, development, transportation, water resources and more.
Inside Arvada
How to Give Public Comment at City Council
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
City Attorney Rachel Morris joins us to break down how public comment works at City Council meetings. Rachel explains what changes when council shifts into a quasi-judicial role for land use hearings and how to make your testimony more effective.
Included in this episode:
- How to sign up and speak during general public comment at City Council meetings
- The City's development review decision-making matrix that determines which development cases reach City Council
- What “quasi-judicial” means and why council members cannot discuss case merits outside the hearing
- General public comment versus sworn public testimony during a public hearing
- How to use the Council meeting packet and staff report to focus on applicable criteria
- Why the Council's quasi-judicial decisions are based on criteria and evidence, not vote-by-crowd energy
- How to submit written public comment
- Why the city is seeking community input on improving the public comment process and how you can participate
News and events:
- Movies Around Town continues Friday, Sept. 18 with a free showing of the film "GOAT" at Arvada Volunteer Firefighters Park
- ADA improvement project at West Arvada Dog Park
- W 72nd Ave restoration work is starting from Oak to Kipling
Visit us at arvadaco.gov/podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.
Why Public Comment Matters
SPEAKER_03Hello and welcome to the Inside Our Vada podcast. I'm Sean Starr, one of your hosts. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Our guest is City Attorney Rachel Morris, who's talking with us all about public comment at city council meetings, particularly those very popular land use cases. Rachel joined the city in 2017 as the city's litigation and employment attorney. She then served as the city's deputy attorney and then in 2019 was appointed to her current position as city attorney by city council. And as always, I'm joined by my co-host Katie Patterson. Hi, Katie.
KatieHey, Sean, and hi Rachel. Thanks for joining us. Hi, happy to be here. So we wanted to have you on now because there was this recent development proposal out west that had a lot of community interest and engagement. And it was called the Avalon or Wellby Gardens proposal to convert some property into multifamily apartments. The proposal went through a number of steps. It culminated in a public hearing with city council. And we just felt that was a good opportunity to help folks kind of understand how these different land use cases work, how public hearings work. There's so many different ways to be involved with council and different types of things that happen at council meetings. And so we just kind of wanted to talk about how the community can have their voice heard. And so we wanted to take a step back first and start a little bit more broadly with kind of the most common way that folks can get involved with public comment and speak directly with their council members that way. And so when, how does that happen? And what can folks expect in that process?
How Public Comment Works
SPEAKER_00Like I think this is a really timely topic. I'm hearing this a lot from people who come to council meetings that they they want to know more about this. So if you want to engage with the full council at the same time, you can engage in public comment. And what that means basically is that you show up to a council meeting, you can do it in person, come up to the council meeting, you sign a little form, and then you get three minutes at the beginning of the meeting or five minutes at the end of the meeting to address council about a lot of different topics. So any topic about our area that really interests you and you want to make sure that council knows what you think.
KatieAnd then we have different types of meetings. So I'll just clarify that too. So every two weeks we have business meetings, and business meetings are the ones that have public comment. We also have like workshops and study sessions. Those are ones where it's more for city staff to educate council on a topic. Um, and so that community to council kind of interaction really is focused around the business meeting.
SPEAKER_00That's correct. There's no opportunity, there's no public comment at those meetings. It really is focused on the business meetings because that's where council takes action. They make decisions.
KatieAnd so you sign this form and then the mayor always kind of gives a little blurb about how public comment works. Can you explain a little bit about what that looks like? Because you can come and talk about anything, but we also want it to be a welcoming space for folks.
SPEAKER_00Of course. Yeah. So we want everyone to feel comfortable getting up there and talking about what interests them and being able to express their positions, regardless of whether people in the audience support or don't support what they're saying. So we really do encourage decorum in the council chambers. We want everyone to be polite and treat everyone else respectfully. Um, we don't allow applause or booing or anything like that during public comment, just to be respectful and give people their time to talk to council.
KatieSometimes folks get impassioned about something one way or another. And you can imagine an issue that does have folks on maybe different sides of the issue. If you get a bunch of people coming up being pro that thing, um, and then the rest of the room is kind of applauding, and you're maybe the minority in the room that wanted to come and speak from a different perspective, that environment no longer feels um like you can kind of voice a difference in opinion, which is kind of where that comes from, too. I think. Yeah, absolutely. Do see it happen too. So
How Development Reaches Council
Katieyeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let's talk about those highly popular land use cases and development cases, because that's what bring folks to council meetings probably most frequently and most often for the first time. A lot of folks get there and they speak to council for the first time during one of those development cases. And as Katie mentioned, you know, we had the the Avalon, the Welby Gardens, however you want to call it, um, council meeting earlier this spring that lasted till the late hours into the morning because so many people gave public comment on that particular topic. Help us understand not all these development cases within the city reach that point of going in front of council. There's other ways that they can be approved by the director of the community and economic development team here at the city as well as the um development board with the city. And so what are the things that happen before it reaches all the way up to that point and going in front of council?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the ones that end up going in front of council have gone through a very robust process, review process with our community and economic development team, and also with outside agencies that our community economic team reach out to to get their feedback. So, like the fire department and things like that. Um, so it goes through this very rigorous review, and then it will go to planning commission first, and then planning commission hears evidence and hears testimony from you know the public and that sort of thing and the applicant, and they make a recommendation to council. At that point, it's scheduled for a public hearing with council, and so that's how it gets to counsel very generally.
SPEAKER_03But there is a uh decision matrix in the land development code that folks can look into, and we can link it in our show notes that explains all the various different land use cases and which one, which decision maker is determined based on the type of development case, right? And so, like to summarize it, the most significant, the most impactful land use cases are the ones that eventually end up at council. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00That's correct. So there's a number of different decision-making tracks. That's um how what we call it in the land development code. And so, as you had mentioned, there's a matrix where you can go and look at what type of application would end up in front of council as the decision maker versus um the director or another body.
KatieThere is often a neighborhood meeting involved, whether or not the case is going to council or the planning commission, because not everything even goes to the planning commission, but they always, if it's going to council, it goes to the planning commission. But I think that neighborhood meeting is a good addition to clarify too that not every single thing that goes through development review goes to a community meeting or neighborhood meeting, but there are a number of things that have that touch point for folks who live in the area to give feedback and meet the developers and talk with them directly.
SPEAKER_00Yep, that's absolutely correct. And that's another thing that you can figure out by looking through that matrix in the land development code. Um, whether or not a neighborhood meeting is required will be listed in that the decision-making track. So you'll be able to figure that out.
Council’s Judge Role Explained
KatieAnd then when a case does go before council, council is taking on a slightly different role from their typical policy decision-making role. Can you explain that role and how it's different and what they're doing in that space?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. So when council hears a quasi-judicial matter, which our land use items typically are, um, they are sitting as a judge. So they're really sitting in a very different capacity than they are when they're making like a legislative decision to pass a code or an administrative decision to approve a contract. When they're deciding a quasi-judicial matter, there are very special rules that apply since they are sitting as judges. So to kind of give you a broad overview and an example of um what we're talking about, like let's say there were you're in a very contentious case and you have um a judge that's going to be deciding your case, you wouldn't feel very good about knowing that during that case, um, the opposing party is, you know, out having coffee with the judge or out golfing with the judge, right? So that's kind of the appearance that we try to reduce here. Our council members aren't allowed to talk with people about the merits of the land use matter outside of that public hearing. So they really do have to respect those boundaries and they can only make a decision based on the evidence that they receive at that public hearing.
SPEAKER_03We've mentioned public comment and there's also public testimony. Can you clarify kind of public comment is a type of public testimony? Is that correct? And kind of the differences there.
SPEAKER_00So I think of it as public comment is um the general time during the meeting where you can talk about pretty much anything. Public testimony is for those public hearings where you get sworn in and you're talking about a very specific thing like a land use matter. So public comment is a little bit less formal and a little bit more broad in terms of the subjects that you can address. And then public testimony is more um narrow and you're sworn in.
KatieI think one of the like challenging tensions that people feel and experience in these cases is that I mean, judges are elected, but it doesn't feel quite the same, right? Like, so like when you have a council member that you feel should be responsive to you as their constituent, it's challenging in that setting to not be able to have that offline conversation or voice your opinion outside of that space. And that kind of falling within that quasi-judicial role. I understand where that creates kind of a tension for people that is challenging to understand if you don't know this process.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Especially since it's different from the other roles that they play as an elected official. So most of the time, you can pick up the phone or email your council member and get a response from them directly about something that you're interested in. The quasi-judicial matter is different and it can be frustrating to have that response, but there's that specific rationale behind it where they're trying to preserve their neutrality for this process. I will note though that if their council makes policy choices about what land use happens across the city, that they can talk about. So, from a very large perspective, if they're looking to re-redo a chapter of the land development code, you can absolutely reach out to them about that. And that is the time to really express your opinion about what you want to see in your city in the future, just not at the individual application, quasi-judicial setting. Right.
KatieAnd just to clarify that, like different areas of the city have different land use criteria, essentially, right? You can think of single family residential, multifamily residential, retail, industrial, like all of those different high-level uses is what we're talking about here. And changing a use goes in front of council. You can talk about general kind of criteria of land use.
SPEAKER_00Well, in the policies behind that. So it's really more looking at the future vision for the city. When we're at that level, that 100,000 foot level, that's when they're passing code provisions that will influence their later quasi-judicial decisions. And so that might be criteria around how they decide a rezoning or a use, or it may be, you know, something different about how we deal with signs as a city or something like that. But there is an opportunity when council are making policy choices to talk to them about that. No billboards.
KatieThat's a totally different thing. But right, like that would fall under this. Like how finger rolls around that. Sign it. Yeah. Yeah.
Testimony Tips That Actually Help
SPEAKER_03All right. So if I'm a community member and I'm interested in um giving public testimony at a council meeting, I see something that's I want to voice my opinion about and I, you know, I see it on the calendar and I want to come to council chambers on a Tuesday night. What sort of advice would you give me to provide some effective public testimony, effective public comment to council that will actually be useful in them making a decision that night?
SPEAKER_00It's a really great question. I think the first thing that I would encourage people to do is to go onto the city website and to download the packet for that meeting, because that'll have all the written material that relates to the decision that council's making. From that packet, you can you can figure out exactly what the decision is that's count that council's being asked to make. So you'll want to make sure that you focus in your comments on that specific decision that council is actually has the power to make in that setting. You also want to look at the criteria that are applicable to that particular decision. And we've made that really easy. There's a staff report in the packet for every agenda item and for land use items, it will have the specific applicable criteria. So you can go through and look at those criteria and make sure that you focus in your comments on those criteria because that is the only thing that council is able to consider is facts and testimony relevant to that applicable criteria.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that packet can be found just on our website if you go to the homepage and you scroll down to like the calendar and then the tab that says meetings, and then you can find, you know, Tuesdays, like as we mentioned, are when council meetings are. Find the council meeting that you want to attend to, and then that's where you go into that meeting, then you can download the agenda and the packet and get all the information. I think the packet is published Fridays before the council meeting on Tuesdays.
SPEAKER_00That's correct. And if it's going by ordinance, and this is so some land use items will be published one time before that. So it'll be two weeks before, and then the Friday before the meeting.
KatieKind of building on this idea of like considering the criteria and the facts of the case, sometimes I think that can feel to the community or some perspectives that their feedback was ignored when council made a decision that um was different from maybe some of the feedback from different community members. And so you're kind of alluding at this, but why isn't it like, you know, if if a bunch of people come out and say they want or don't want something or for or against a project, that doesn't necessarily determine how council makes their decision.
SPEAKER_00That's right. What we try to do is create predictability, both for property owners who are trying to make use of their property, but also for the neighboring community. And the way that we do that is by creating very specific rules that we follow as part of this process. And if we know, for instance, that we're going to want to consider whether or not, you know, there's specific things are provided for as part of this development, it's good for us to give advanced notice to the property owner and the neighboring community through our code. And so that's why it's so important to us that we have council stick to those applicable criteria. Because if they're just making decisions based on whatever they hear that night, we're not creating that long-term predictability that falls under the strategy of our long-term land use and development in the city.
SPEAKER_03And if you want an input on the long-term land use of the city, now is a great time because we are like right in the beginning stages of updating our comprehensive plan. And so we had an episode uh earlier this year talking all about the comp plan and how to get involved. So we can link to that in the show notes. So just wanted to put that out there because the timing is perfect on that.
KatieYeah, they're updating the cookbook, the land development codes, the recipes. I think we talked about that before. We'll link back to the episode.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, great analogy there. Yeah.
Fixing The Public Comment Process
SPEAKER_03Um and so, you know, public comment has become, you know, hot topic within the community over the past, I don't know, six months. I'm sure it kind of comes in waves. And the long and short of it is we are trying to improve the way we do public comment because um, you know, just we want to make things more efficient. We don't want folks having to wait hours upon hours to give their public comment and have their voice heard. And so the way we're doing it is we are asking for uh the community to be part of this uh improvement process. We have a page right now that you can go to and you can sign up to be notified about future opportunities to come and do essentially like a focus group and have your opinion heard. Can you just tell us a little bit more about what we're trying to improve about the public comment process?
SPEAKER_00So we're just trying to balance the various interests of all the community members that come to our public meetings to be heard. So you might come to um talk at the beginning of the meeting at the three-minute general public comment, and that may be what you want to do as when you show up for that meeting. But there may be also be a lot of people there who are waiting to give public testimony for a later agenda item. So the question that we have is what is the right balance for us as a community when we look at how long we give for public comment at the beginning of the meeting, at the end of the meeting, and then are we being fair to the people who are coming to give public testimony in the middle?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so like we said, we'll we'll link to that webpage and you can sign up and you can definitely be involved in that. I believe, you know, this episode comes out in like early September, and we're aiming for like mid-October for that opportunity. So I'm sure anyone who wants to be involved in that process, uh, we've got a spot for you.
KatieYeah, and then before we let you go here, what what common questions or misconceptions? We've talked about a lot of them, but what else could we kind of help clear up for folks?
SPEAKER_00You know, that we had a question come up the other day, and I think this is a really good one. When we have a land use item that is on the agenda for a public hearing, we usually group project items together. So the same facts are relevant, even if there's multiple decisions that council's making about the same project. So what we'll do is we open up the hearing and everybody gets the chance to give public testimony for the entire project once, as opposed to us doing a separate hearing for each decision that council's making on the exact same project. So that was something that um we cleared up the other day. It's you can see the way that we list it on the agenda that it's one main heading, and then underneath it are the individual decisions. So just wanted to point that out. I think just generally it can feel complicated.
KatieI think there are a lot of different types of development review cases that exist and that it goes these different routes depending on the type. I mean, it's everything from like annexing land into the city to a new use of a type of land to like changing a sign, you know, what the sign policy is at the city. So like there's just so much different scale and scope of what what we're kind of talking about at the big picture level. And so it's complicated. Yeah, absolutely. And then the other one we didn't really talk on was written public testimony and comment. Maybe you could touch on how that works.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So we have the opportunity in a couple of different ways for people to make their opinions known in writing as well. So if you're not able to go to the council meeting or if you just prefer to um voice your opinion in writing, you're welcome to do that. So we have a place on our website where you can go and fill out a form and submit that form, and that will be included in the packet. The city council gets copies of all of that. Um, you can also email the city clerk, and the city clerk um will include that in our packet if it relates to an agenda item. But definitely the city council will see those things and they're able to understand what your opinion is that way as well.
KatieAnd we want to encourage people to use the form because you can email council about anything you so choose, but the email directly to council um will be harder to keep track of and make sure it gets in the actual packet if it's a public hearing land use case.
SPEAKER_00That's correct because we get a lot of emails on those things. I think on the um the Avalon example, we've probably got hundreds of emails. So to make sure it gets in the packet, using the form is the best option.
Trivia Plus News And Events
SPEAKER_03All right. Uh before we let you go, we've got uh quick segment, uh trivia. Three questions uh related to public comment and your uh role with the city. And so um if you know the answer, which you might know some of these, let the uh other person try and guess.
KatieDun dun dun.
SPEAKER_03Unless you both know. The city attorney is one of three positions appointed by city council. What are the other two?
KatieOkay, I always mess up the third one. You know, I'm sure. Okay, so I know it's city attorney, uh city manager, and it's judge or chief of police. Is it judge? It's judge.
SPEAKER_03Because when we had our city manager, Don Wake on, I messed it up and I said said police chief but it's yeah, judge, city manager, and city attorney. All right, question two. We'll get a little uh multiple choice for this one. How long did the public hearing last on April 21st for the conditional use permit for the Avalon Arvada, aka Welby Gardens case? Was it three hours and 27 minutes, four hours and twenty-seven minutes, five hours and twenty seven minutes, or six hours and twenty seven minutes?
SPEAKER_01The whole meeting or just the just the hearing, yeah. That was a long meeting. I'm gonna go with the four and a half.
SPEAKER_03Four and a half.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna say five and a half.
SPEAKER_03The entire meeting was eight hours, and so the the Avalon portion was five out five and a half hours.
KatieThat was a full workday starting at six p.m. Yeah it was.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, one till what, 3 a.m., I think. So third and final question. This year's Welby Gardens City Council meeting was actually not the longest one that I could find on record. There was another council meeting on June 15th, 2020, that lasted eight and a half hours. Any idea what the topic was? I've got multiple trace options.
KatieYeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, that went eight and a half hours. Um, according to a Narvada press article, 30 individuals gave public comment, and almost 400 emails were sent in, and it passed by a slim four to three margin.
SPEAKER_00That's correct. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You were probably at that one.
SPEAKER_00I was. I was there all night.
SPEAKER_03Every couple years you get these marathon meetings. It's wild.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03All right, as a reminder, we love hearing from our listeners. You can stay in touch by texting us using the link at the top of the show notes, or you can email us at podcast at Arvada.org. We love hearing feedback about what you enjoy, what you'd like to see differently, episode ideas, and more. Now on to our news and events section. Our movies around town series continues on Friday, September 18th with a free showing of the movie Goat at Arvada Volunteer Firefighters Park. Live music starts at 6 45 with the movie beginning at about 8 p.m. To learn more, you can visit arvataco.gov slash movies. We also have an ADA improvement project going on at West Arvada Dog Park, and that is expected to last about through the end of September. And part of that project, the west portion of the dog park is temporarily closed while the east side is still open. To learn more about that, you can visit ArvadaCo.gov slash dog park.
KatieAnd the West 72nd Avenue restoration work is starting from Oak to Kipling, and so there will be some travel impacts, and then the biggest upcoming impact will be a full extended weekend closure of 72nd that's expected later in September. So keep an eye out for more information about that. Work overall is expected to take four to five months to complete work like the oak intersection, sidewalk improvements, and some repaving. So encourage folks to visit the project webpage where you can also sign up for project-specific email updates. And then as a reminder, like we talked about with Rachel today, if you're interested in participating in shaping the future improvements to public comment, please sign up at the link in our show notes. Um we'll be looking to schedule a community conversation in October. Thank you to our guest today, Rachel Morris. Be sure to listen to our next episode with traffic engineer Elijah Veney Kotza talking about traffic signal retiming across the city. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Creative Services.
SPEAKER_03Today's fun fact is the city's legal department also includes risk and safety, and they give out a safety coin featuring Sid the Celery, and it's given to staff members who are practicing good safety on the job.
KatieWhoa.