Residents will need to attend Sacramento City Council meetings later in the evening if they want to speak about issues that are not on the weekly council agenda.

The City Council changed its meeting rules Tuesday night to move the open public comment section to the end of the weekly meeting. Currently, the public can speak at the beginning of the meeting on any issue that is not related to the City Council agenda.

Council members were split on the issue and voted 5-3 to alter the time of the open public comment section. Mayor Kevin Johnson and council members Kevin McCarty and Ray Tretheway opposed the change. Councilman Steve Cohn was absent from the meeting.

Johnson and Tretheway said it benefits the public to keep the open public comment period earlier in the evening. Councilwoman Lauren Hammond, meanwhile, strongly supported the move.

“I think moving public comment to the end hurts transparency and council access, and I think it’s disrespectful to the public,” Johnson said.

City Council meetings start at 6 p.m., and citizens often participate in open public comment period before 7 p.m. Now, citizens who want to speak on off-topic issues will need to wait until the end of the meeting. City Council meetings vary in length; some meetings have run for several hours.

Tretheway said public access to the open comment section of the council meetings would be limited because of Regional Transit’s cuts to light rail night routes.

Tracie Rice-Bailey, an advocate for the homeless population, said moving the comment period would be “so very inconvenient for our people.”

Rice-Bailey is an activist with Safe Ground Sacramento, a group that lobbies city leaders to designate a public space in which homeless people could legally camp.

Safe Ground supporters regularly advocate for their cause during the open public comment period of City Council meetings.

Councilwoman Lauren Hammond, meanwhile, said that moving the section to the end of meeting could make the meetings quicker. “My hope is that our meetings won’t be as long,” she said.

Hammond also said that “special interests” dominate the current open public comment time period. She did not identify the groups.

“It might be one group this month; it might be a neighborhood group another month,” Hammond said.

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Council leaders also decided Tuesday to hold a monthly afternoon City Council meeting.

The council voted 7-1 to meet monthly at 2 p.m. Johnson opposed the idea of an afternoon meeting, saying that adding a meeting to the council’s plate would be inefficient.

Councilman Rob Fong said the afternoon meeting would enable to council to hold workshops and better manage its agenda. The council did not choose a day of the week for the monthly meeting.

Photo by Brandon Darnell.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.