When city council members abandoned a proposal Monday night that would have ended the broadcast of some public comments and voted on a new proposal, some citizens had mixed reactions.

The council voted 6-2 to shorten the amount of time the public has to speak, hoping to end what some council members call “theatrics.”

Community activist John Pollard said he is not happy the public is losing three minutes.

Pollard said the citizens did achieve some victory because council members threw out a proposal to ban televising public comment. It also threw out a proposal to eliminate the public comment portion of the meetings entirely.

“(The proposals) went up in flames,” Pollard said.

The last-minute compromise plan proposed by Third Ward Councilmember Tony Benavides allows the public comment period at the end of meetings reserved for nonagenda items to be merged with an earlier chance to speak on items up for vote.

Residents will have a total of six minutes to speak to the council during meetings, opposed to the previous nine.

“As far as I am concerned, we the ‘clowns’ and ‘grandstanders’ have won,” Pollard said.

Charlene Decker, who refuses to be referred to as a community activist because she believes it has adopted a negative connotation, disagreed. She said the plan was not a compromise.

“We know when we’ve been taken for a ride,” she said. “We are not a bunch of people who are against council members, we just don’t trust them,” Decker said.

She also is upset that she didn’t know about Benavides’ last minute proposal.

“Most of us didn’t even know what was being voted on,” she said. “I am not happy and I will not let the issue go.”

Decker plans on attending regular subcommittee meetings that take place during the day and videotaping them for cable access.

City Attorney Jim Smiertka said subcommittees don’t make policy, they make recommendations, which implies council members could potentially prohibit the videotaping due to the Open Meetings Act.

The act, one of Michigan’s public information laws, requires all meetings of a public body to be open.

But Smiertka said he doesn’t think council members will prohibit the videotaping because they always have treated subcommittee meetings like a regular city council meeting.

Lansing resident Willy Williams said he has been trying to “get rid” of the “grandstanders” for the past five years.

“The vote was a complete failure,” he said.

Lansing resident and regular Michael Simon said this was definitely a compromise he can live with.

“We can still talk about Lansing. I’m happy we’ve made an agreement,” he said.

But council regular Eugene Buckley said it was not a compromise.

“They take away your civil liberties, you take them back.”