West Ventura News

Camarillo, California – At their meeting of February 8, 2023, the Camarillo City Council unanimously approved moving the general public comment portion of the City Council agendas to 6:00pm (formerly 7:00pm), beginning with the meeting on February 22, 2023.

Every public meeting of the Camarillo City Council includes a time dedicated to general public comments, meaning comments on items that are not listed on the meeting agenda. City Council meetings begin at 5:00pm and, while the meeting start time is not changing, the general public comment time is being adjusted in an effort to make it more convenient for the community. 

“The City is committed to making public participation as convenient as possible,” shared City Manager Greg Ramirez. “This new time is intended to allow for increased meeting efficiency, while maintaining transparency and accessible participation to the public.”

The former policy stated that public hearings will be heard at 7:00 P.M., unless otherwise legally noticed. While this time may be optimal for large-scale public hearings, the majority of hearings could be heard in the normal course of business on the published agenda.

The decision by the City Council to approve the new policy allows greater flexibility in scheduling public hearings.  The majority of public hearings can be heard in the normal course of business as part of the regular meeting agenda and will be scheduled in subsequent order following discussion items.  For large-scale public hearings or items of significant interest, time-certain public hearing items can be scheduled, and the set time will be legally noticed, advertised, and clearly indicated on the published agenda. 

Camarillo City Council meetings are generally held on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. To access all meeting agendas and public hearing notices, please visit www.cityofcamarillo.org, and click on “Meetings” under Trending Topics on the front page. Item-specific comments are always accepted in-person, as well as in a variety of ways, including through the City’s electronic form (www.cityofcamarillo.org/publiccomment).

All City Council meetings are livestreamed on the City’s YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/thecityofcamarillo/live) and live broadcast on the City’s Local Government Channels – Spectrum Channel 10 and Frontier Channel 29, as well as through the “Camarillo Community Channel” mobile app available on Android, Amazon FireTV, Roku, and Apple IOS.

Original source can be found here.