Dear California, Stop hitting yourself.

I agree. Governance bodies may take public comments, but for the ceremony and to legitimize the process; they ignore them, and vote as if they never took place. I've seen the same elsewhere, such as at the Menlo Park City School District meeting: they take comments, ignore them, then vote how they intended to vote prior to the public discussion. But think how hard it is to process creative discussion on your feet, particularly when arguments arise that repudiate your position, and you have no way to validate the new arguments or to research them prior to the vote. Whom do you trust? What should you do? It is the process that is broken: votes should not happen immediately after the comment period, but after a period of evaluation of the comments; and then the governance body should have to repudiate the comments or at least to reply to them.