A week ago in this space, we lauded the Patterson City Council for the levelheaded way it handled City Manager Cleve Morris and council members’ worries about his performance during an Oct. 26 special meeting. The council acted fairly when it gave Morris direction for improvement rather than pursuing his termination.

We remain encouraged by the council’s approach and hopeful that its members continue to work together in a productive way to solve difficult problems.

But there were aspects of the meeting that trouble us.

Before the council moved into closed session that night, some of the more than 100 audience members — aware from media reports that Morris was somewhat under fire — wanted to vouch for Morris’ character and otherwise offer their support.

They were denied that opportunity. Instead, they were not permitted to speak until after the council had emerged from the 2½-hour meeting and announced that no action had been taken. We believe that constitutes a violation of the Brown Act, California’s open meeting law, and California Newspaper Publishers Association legal counsel Jim Ewert seconds that.

The Brown Act states that all special meetings must include time when the public can comment on any item on the agenda “before or during the legislative body’s consideration of the item.”

Because the item in question was discussed in closed session, the public comment period would have had to come first.

City attorney George Logan disagrees. In an e-mail exchange with Ewert and the Irrigator this week, Logan argued that because the council could not have fired Morris that night — by law, it only could have instructed Logan to draw up a notice that would then have been sent to Morris — no substantive action was taken, and therefore the “consideration” of the item was still ongoing when the public comments were allowed.

But as Ewert points out, the mere fact that consideration of something like the city manager’s employment might drag out over multiple meetings does not prevent the council from having to allow public comments at each of those meetings. Ewert argues, as we do, that those comments should come “before or during” the discussion at each particular meeting.

The council also appears to have committed a violation when it announced, after the same closed session, that it had voted to reimburse developer John Ramos for legal fees incurred in his appeal of city staff’s approval of the relocation of his tenant, the Del Puerto Health Center.

When the announcement was made, it was not accompanied by what the vote was or how each council member voted, as required by the Brown Act.

The vote was 3-2, with Mayor Becky Campo, Councilwoman Annette Smith and Councilman Dominic Farinha in favor and Councilman Sam Cuellar and Councilwoman Dejeune Shelton opposed — but that should have been announced at the meeting. The council added information about the vote to the minutes at its next meeting, but that was more than a week after the fact.

The violations ultimately did not change the outcome of the meeting. But they point to a general disregard for the rights of the people the council was elected to serve, and we’d be remiss not to bring that up.

We’ve seen the same problems with the Del Puerto Health Care District’s board of directors, who we feel met improperly in closed session earlier this year to discuss the health center’s move to the Keystone Pacific Business Park and did not adequately notice the ongoing discussion on the agendas of multiple meetings, never allowing a proper period of public comment on the move.

Like any law, the Brown Act can be interpreted in different ways, and there’s not always court precedent to guide its use.

It would behoove the City Council and all other government bodies in this city to err on the side of openness, rather than looking for ways to keep their discussions private and shut out the residents they serve.