Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said he will impose new rules allowing him to eject disruptive people from Portland City Council meetings after jeering protesters again prevented the council from doing city business Wednesday.

The council ultimately finished its work on city contracts, policies and spending behind locked doors.

Wheeler failed to quell chanting, taunting and even laughter from dozens of protesters who kept commissioners from talking to each other and hearing from staffers or the public.

Wheeler paused the meeting twice in the hopes protesters would settle down, and ultimately moved the meeting to behind locked doors at City Hall.

The council allowed constituents to watch the hearing from a viewing room in the nearby Portland Building and invited people to sign up to testify on specific items, at which point they were escorted to City Hall.

"I personally find that unacceptable," Wheeler said at the closed council meeting. "There are a lot of people who signed up to testify. They would like to come in and be heard, and we're going to provide a safe environment for that to happen...This is not how I would like to run City Council meetings."

Protesters have repeatedly shut down the City Council meetings at Portland City Hall since Wheeler's first day in office.

Wheeler will introduce a policy next week that would allow the council's presiding officer to eject people for disruptive, dangerous or threatening behavior for as long as 24 hours. It also would create "administrative exclusions" that permit the person in charge to exclude a disruptive individual for up to two months, provided the city sends a written notice and gives the individual the opportunity to appeal in writing.

A federal judge ruled in December 2015 that excluding a person from a council meeting based on past behavior violates that individual's First Amendment rights.

Mayoral spokesman Michael Cox said U.S. District Judge Michael Simon based his judgment on the "vagueness" of city code. The new policy is meant to make the code less vague, and therefore "more constitutional," he said.

"We feel the code changes will allow us to conduct the business of the people, minimize disruptions, and pass judicial muster," Cox told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a text message.

"Nothing in this judgment shall be construed to limit the city's ability to adopt and implement an alternative exclusion ordinance consistent with this judgment and the court's opinion and order," Simon's judgment said.

The mayor hopes the new rule will help promote a safe space for more of Portland's 600,000 plus residents to share a variety of opinions and ensure the council is not "spending every meeting hearing from the same five middle-aged white guys," Wheeler told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview Wednesday.

On Wednesday, protesters shut down the meeting after the council heard from the family of Quanice Hayes, a 17-year-old black teen shot and killed by a Portland police officer, demanding Wheeler says Hayes' name.

Wheeler said he wanted to hear from the family, and appreciated their thoughtful, emotional and powerful remarks. The mayor called a recess after mother Venus Hayes' remarks and left the room.

He noted the significant impact the mother's loss had on him as both a parent and the police commissioner.

"It just seemed wrong to me to immediately go into a budget request item," Wheeler said. "It seemed it would be cheapening the moment."

The mayor also hoped that if he took a break, the protesters--which he was careful to differentiate from Hayes' close family and friends--would allow the meeting to continue. They did not.

When he returned, protesters yelled at him for leaving. "Say his name!" they chanted. "Quanice Hayes!" They laughed when he called them disruptive. When Wheeler asked them to let city business continue and to talk to him outside, they evoked an Internet meme, telling him "cash me outside, how bow dah."

"There is an underlying assumption that people who come to the chamber will act like adults," Wheeler said. "There is a group of people who are here solely for the purpose to disrupt."

Wheeler spoke with the protesters outside of the chambers. He wove his way through a yelling crowd to try to talk to them because, he said, he's not "the kind of elected official who likes to hide behind closed doors."

"I'm probably more available than any other elected official in this state is to people who have opposing points of view to my own," Wheeler said.

Wheeler even listened to protesters when they knocked on his door during a protest at his Southwest Portland home on a late holiday night.

During that protest last week, protesters demanded Wheeler hear their statement about divesting from companies linked to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The mayor opened the door to his home in his bathrobe and listened to their statement, while his wife yelled in the background. He did that even though he said Wednesday he considered the act harassment of his wife and daughter and neighborhood children, not a protest.

"My daughter doesn't understand what a protest is," Wheeler said. "All she thinks is it's an angry mob showing up at the door, and they want daddy."

When people want to talk to the mayor, Wheeler said, he makes himself available.

"Everybody deserves to be heard, but the problem is right now not everybody is being heard because there are people who are trying to shut down the voices of our community," Wheeler said. "I'm not going to allow that to happen."

Note: This story was updated to more accurately reflect how long protesters can could get suspended under the new rule. City officials can suspend disrupters for up to two months.

--Jessica Floum

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