At 7:30 pm Wednesday, July 2, the Legislative Council is expected to review a request by Chief of Police David Kullgren to grant him the authority to require permits for large gatherings or parades organized in the town and to charge organizer for the overtime of the police. The review may or may not lead to a referral to the council's Ordinance Subcommittee. A public hearing will not be held on that date - the council must notice any hearing 10 days before the date of the hearing.

It's a sticky wicket. The Rock This Democracy protests, which have been occurring monthly, is clearly the source of the chief's consternation, as assigning regular police presence to larger gathering must be putting a significant hole in his overtime budget at a time when budgets are tight and about to get even tighter. Organizers and supporters of the events, which so far have occurred on April 5, April 19, May 1, and June 14. Those events followed two community dialogue events at Edmond Town Hall in February and March. Estimates say 1,500 residents from Newtown and surrounding towns attended the June 14 event. A July event has not yet been announced, but Rock This Democracy coordinates with other protest groups around the country - there were 1,800 protests coordinated with the June 14 event as part of a "No Kings" rally.

Obviously, these protesters would like to be able to keep their ability to quickly and nimbly schedule events - the "No Kings" event was announced roughly a week before the event itself, to stay coordinated with the other groups.

From the perspective of the police department, the fact that the Rock This Democracy group has had four events already, and each seeing increasing attendance, has the chief justifiably concerned that protests continuing as long as the weather allows (possibly into late fall/early winter) could put a hole in his $255,465 overtime budget, even with a $34,111 increase over last year's budget. Large, near monthly protests in town is a fairly unprecedented event, and even with an increase, if the PD finds itself low on overtime funds by the end of fiscal year 2025-26 there may be woefully few ways to fill in that gap with such a tight budget, barring going to the reserve fund. Some measure of proactiveness on the part of the department's leadership is not surprising in preventing problems down the road.

However, an ordinance for a perhaps once in a lifetime series of events may be an overreaction. Anything that the Rock This Democracy is saddled with in the form of an ordinance will also be a burden faced by any future event in town and could in fact discourage grassroots public gatherings of any sort.

While not entirely against the idea of an ordinance in some form if the council deems it necessary, it seems a better course of action may be, rather than set something in stone that will affect all future protests and parades, for the PD administration and the Rock This Democracy organizers to sit down together, perhaps at a Police Commission meeting, and hash out a mutually beneficial agreement.