Park Hills postpones vote on public comments, meeting structure

“I should be firmer in these meetings,” said Park Hills Mayor Kathy Zembrodt at Monday’s City Council meeting, where the community learned she had removed a proposed ordinance from the meeting agenda that would codify rules and procedures on how to structure the council meetings per the advice of City Attorney Dan Braun, who did not attend the meeting.

“There will be no discussion on it, and it is not on the agenda, and it will not be read,” Zembrodt continued.

Braun had advised removing the ordinance from the agenda after city resident Gretchen Stephenson, who also did not attend the meeting, had threatened on social media to sue the city over what she viewed as unlawful actions the council had taken over the past two months, one in September and another in October.

The ordinance, which underwent a first reading back in October, was crafted by Zembrodt in conjunction with Braun, who also serves as the city attorney for Newport.

Modeled after a resolution from 2011, the ordinance sought to formalize meeting procedures around a simplified version of Robert’s Rules of Order, a set of parliamentary procedures dating back to the late nineteenth century.

Many municipal and corporate bodies have employed variations on Robert’s Rules to keep meetings running smoothly and intentionally, and much of the discussion in October focused on whether or not the adoption of Robert’s Rules was warranted.

The 2011 resolution had also mandated that anyone who wanted to address the city council had to submit a petition to do so by noon on the Friday before the meeting. Resolutions are not binding like ordinances, so the ordinance would have codified the stipulations into law in a way the resolution had not.

There were some key differences, however, between the proposed ordinance and the older resolution. For instance, it had language – likely in reaction to Council Member Sarah Froelich’s walk-out in September – that stated “if a quorum is present at the commencement of any meeting, once the matter has been called, any action taken remains valid even if a member of Council voluntarily withdrawals or leaves the proceedings leaving fewer than the number required for a quorum.”

Following Froelich’s walk-out, the council cast a vote anyway. Stephenson issued a complaint to the attorney general’s office, seeking an opinion on whether the vote was lawful. Kentucky law states that “unless otherwise provided by statute, a majority of a legislative body shall constitute a quorum and a vote of a majority of a quorum shall be sufficient to take action.”

The AG’s office later declined to even take up the matter of whether or not Froelich’s actions constituted a lack of quorum, and subsequent council meetings saw discussions about whether or not Froelich was, in fact, out of the room when the vote was cast. In the end, the council voted to record Froelich’s actions as an abstention in the meeting’s minutes.

Another stipulation in the ordinance eases the timeline by which a resident can petition to speak before the council by moving the deadline up to 3 p.m. on the Friday before the meeting.

The ordinance also states that permission to speak “may or may not be granted at the Mayor’s discretion.” Finally, the ordinance also sets up guardrails against “personal, impertinent, profane or slanderous remarks” and allows police to remove people from the council chambers if they’re deemed disruptive.

Although freedom of speech is guaranteed broadly under the U.S. Constitution, Kentucky state law does not grant individual Kentuckians the right to address local bodies in public meetings, even though boards and city councils cannot bar people from attending public meetings.

As a result, municipalities are not required to allow public comments, although many do. This is not true for school boards, which are required to have at least 15 minutes of public comments at each regular meeting.

Given some of the criticism the council has taken over the past few months, the timing of the ordinance was uneasy. Moreover, other cities in Northern Kentucky have instituted restrictions on public comments in response to either vocal outcry from the public or rancorous gridlock from within.

Zembrodt recommended discussing the issues in closed session before returning the issue to a public agenda. In spite of this, Froelich tried, as she had in the previous council meeting, to introduce a resolution that would revise the record. Although she was able to get a motion and a second to amend the agenda, the vote ended in a 3-3 tie.

“It’s not going on the agenda,” Zembrodt said, effectively voting no.

The council moved on to other matters, but a resident, Dan Lutz, got up to speak during the meeting’s public comment section to address the proposed ordinance, some of which he thought would be unreasonable to enforce.

What if, Lutz said, a meeting’s agenda wasn’t posted until, say, 2 p.m. on the Friday before the meeting? “That would only leave people an hour,” Lutz said, and asked them to consider adding something to the proposed ordinance that would mandate the posting of agendas in a timely enough manner to give residents the opportunity to consider and make petitions.

He also recommended having a sign-up sheet outside the meeting so people could sign up to speak, which is common policy for many cities and bodies in the region.

In spite of Zembrodt’s prior warnings, this stimulated more discussion on the issue, and the council seemed open to some potential revisions.

“The idea of any protocol should be to make things more open, more efficient and more available to everybody,” said Council Member Pam Spoor.

“Even though maybe some people are not happy with all our decisions, we gotta look for everybody in the city,” said Council Member Greg Claypole.

Council Member Emily Sayers said, “the sign up sheet, doing that, having that, to me, is enough.”

Council Member Laura Cardosi asked about the possibility of a three-member subcommittee to make recommendations on the new protocols. Zembrodt said that could be discussed at an upcoming caucus meeting.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the council did go into executive session, but they did not take any action afterwards.