By Michael Maresh | PinalCentral
While both the Coolidge Unified School District and Central Arizona Valley Institute of Technology have continued having calls to the public on their agendas for their meetings, the Coolidge City Council has done away with them.
The council chose to stop allowing the public to speak at its meetings at the onset of COVID-19 for safety reasons. There is no requirement that the council has in allowing members of the public to speak at meetings unless there is a public hearing.
City Manager Rick Miller said this is the decision of Mayor Jon Thompson.
“Since the beginning of the COVID crisis on the advice of our legal counsel we have followed the governor’s proclamations and CDC Guidelines regarding public gatherings as close as possible in city meetings,” Thompson wrote in a text message. “I have tried to keep our staff and citizens safe.”
In the text message he wrote that for safety reasons the call to the public was removed from the agenda
