Aurora City Council is moving forward with penalties for people who break public comment rules during council meetings.

If passed at a future regular meeting, the rule changes would also prioritize students to speak during public comment sessions and limit people to speaking only one time per meeting.

Currently, the council has one hourlong public comment period at the beginning of each meeting and one hourlong period at the end.

If the new rule changes pass, those who spoke in the first session would not be able to speak again in the second session of the same meeting.

For the last several years following the police shooting of Kilyn Lewis, multiple speakers have attended every council meeting to protest actions by the Aurora Police Department.

The same speakers have come to the podium both at the beginning and the end of each meeting.

The new proposed rule changes would also prioritize students under 18 years old during the first hour of public comment. This change was intended to encourage more young people to come to council meetings to speak earlier in the evening.

Several council members voiced concerns about public speakers using explicit language and said the rule change would allow kids to speak before others and leave before adults speak.

Notably, the rule changes would include a penalty for people who speak beyond their allotted three minutes.

If a person speaks for 10 seconds beyond their designated time, the mayor would ask them to stop. If they continue, the mayor would call the next speaker. If the active speaker continued after that, they would not be allowed to speak at the next scheduled council meeting, the rule language reads.

Several other proposed rule changes would alter how funds roll over each year for council members and encourage council members to show up to meetings in person. The full language of the rule changes can be read in council agenda documents.

Aurora officials have worked to change and update council rules through an Ad Hoc Rules Committee after several years of tension between council members and the public.

Under the former council, which changed during last November’s election, public comment rules changed repeatedly to address protests.

The new council changed the rules back to what they initially were.

Now, those rules will change again if they are passed in a future regular meeting.