The Lisbon City Hall will resume a practice interrupted by the pandemic: decentralized meetings to listen to the people. The first one will be on April 6th in the parishes of Avenidas Novas and Campolide.
The Lisbon City Council, like other municipalities in the country, is required to hold at least one public meeting per month. In these meetings, citizens can register to expose their problems, doubts or ideas to the city councilors. But until the beginning of the pandemic, some of these public meetings had a decentralized character.
Instead of the councilmen meeting in the City Hall and receiving the citizens there, the so-called decentralized public meetings are held in different places in the city and in different parishes. The idea is that each decentralized meeting is dedicated to one or more parishes, and the agenda often includes just hearing the people who have previously signed up to speak about issues on their street or in their neighborhood. The decentralized public meetings of the Lisbon City Council are, therefore, opportunities for people to expose more local issues of the city directly to the council leaders.
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After an interruption caused by the pandemic, the decentralized public meetings are again promoted by the Lisbon City Hall. The first one is scheduled for April 6th, 5:30pm, and will be dedicated to the parishes of Avenidas Novas and Campolide. Residents who wish to speak at this meeting may register by e-mail sg.daosm.dacm@cm-lisboa.pt or by one of these telephone numbers: 213 227 089 | 213 227 294 | 213 227 308 (weekdays, between 9:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.). Registration opens 15 days before the meeting date - that is, this Wednesday, March 23 - and closes 48 hours before the meeting date.
According to the Lisbon City Hall, the agenda has as a single point the hearing of the citizens, in which it is stipulated that "the interventions of the public, a maximum number of 20, will be ordered so as to prioritize those that focus on matters of interest to the zone, collective or public"points out the municipality. The meeting will take place in person at the Campolide Campus of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Colégio Almada Negreiros, floor -1, auditorium A14); and, as usual, will be broadcasted on the municipality's YouTube.
Suspended by the pandemic
Decentralized public meetings had been suspended by the Covid-19 pandemic. The last one had taken place on February 20, 2020 in the Marvila Municipal Library, having served to listen to the parishioners of Marvila and Beato. There was another decentralized meeting scheduled for March 11, 2020 in the parish of Benfica, but the then executive presided by Fernando Medina decided to postpone it without setting a new date. In 2020, there were only two decentralized meetings - the other was on January 8th of that year, dedicated to the Avenidas Novas and Arroios parishes.
On February 23rd this year, the PCP and PS councillors had already questioned the PSD/CDS-PP leadership, which governs the city without an absolute majority, about when the decentralised public meetings would be resumed. In response, the vice-president, Filipe Anacoreta Correia, who conducted the meeting in the absence of the mayor, assured that it was the intention of the executive to resume "as soon as possible". The regulations of the Lisbon City Council foresee at least one decentralized public meeting per month.
