Thursday, March 22, 2007
By the rules
You may have seen news coverage like this article in The News Tribune about a discussion the Lakewood council had about public comment. Public comment is the part of council meetings where members of the public can raise any question or subject in front of the council and the rest of the audience. Some of you may recall that I conducted an Internet poll that asked you about the subject of council meetings and public comment. It's a dull subject to a lot of folks, but not to everyone who comes to meetings.
One thing that surprised me from the poll is that significant number of folks were staying away from meetings, they said, because they were turned off by 10-minute speeches by certain members of the public. While the council did argue about some rules changes, we did all agree that general public comment should be limited to three minutes. Three minutes is the rule in almost every city. Obviously people can also submit comments in writing, and a speaker can make a key point within three minutes pretty easily.
So you should know about this rule change, particularly if you were one of the folks turned off by longer speeches.
The part of the discussion that did attract news attention was sort of funny. Some council members persist in thinking that you can legislate 'nice.' I personally stand by my earlier comments that you have every right to say almost whatever you want during public comment as long as you say it within those three minutes. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Right now, we don't seem to have any good scandals going, but at some point someone angry will get up in front of the council. What happens then might be pretty interesting as the council argues whether he or she should be allowed to continue.
But back to the three minute rule ... If nothing else, the new limit should "tighten up" the length of council meetings and allow us to get to matters of general interest sooner than we have in the past. The brutal truth is that many members of the public leave as the evening gets longer, and it would be better to tackle important matters when these folks are still around.
I personally think it would be better to put public comment at the end of the meeting; it's important to hear and learn from public comment, but it's also important to get business of general interest done as early in the evening as possible when we have the largest audience. However, almost everyone who took my poll and the other council members think public comment at the end of the evening is a lousy idea. So I'm going to drop it. It's not that important. Let's see how the rule changes play out.
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One thing that surprised me from the poll is that significant number of folks were staying away from meetings, they said, because they were turned off by 10-minute speeches by certain members of the public. While the council did argue about some rules changes, we did all agree that general public comment should be limited to three minutes. Three minutes is the rule in almost every city. Obviously people can also submit comments in writing, and a speaker can make a key point within three minutes pretty easily.
So you should know about this rule change, particularly if you were one of the folks turned off by longer speeches.
The part of the discussion that did attract news attention was sort of funny. Some council members persist in thinking that you can legislate 'nice.' I personally stand by my earlier comments that you have every right to say almost whatever you want during public comment as long as you say it within those three minutes. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Right now, we don't seem to have any good scandals going, but at some point someone angry will get up in front of the council. What happens then might be pretty interesting as the council argues whether he or she should be allowed to continue.
But back to the three minute rule ... If nothing else, the new limit should "tighten up" the length of council meetings and allow us to get to matters of general interest sooner than we have in the past. The brutal truth is that many members of the public leave as the evening gets longer, and it would be better to tackle important matters when these folks are still around.
I personally think it would be better to put public comment at the end of the meeting; it's important to hear and learn from public comment, but it's also important to get business of general interest done as early in the evening as possible when we have the largest audience. However, almost everyone who took my poll and the other council members think public comment at the end of the evening is a lousy idea. So I'm going to drop it. It's not that important. Let's see how the rule changes play out.
