I know some of you out there are involved in politics at the local level. I would like to know what any of you think about this story. The newly elected Board of Selectmen in Saugus recently voted to no longer have a public comment period during their meetings. If a town citizen wants to speak to the BOS, he or she must send a request in writing to be placed on the agenda for the next meeting. Until this change, every BOS meeting had a public forum segment during which anyone could stand up and speak to the selectmen about any issue. It made citizen participation in town government very easy.
Does anyone have any thoughts? What does your town governing body do? (BTW, the Massachusetts Open Meeting law does not require that a governing body provide citizens with the opportunity to speak to it during a meeting, but maybe it should.)
I can understand the Selectmen’s decision. Believe it or not, Selectmen have business to do, and if enormous amounts of time are spent listening to every gripe, the stuff they must do gets pushed back.
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p>However, the first step to getting things under control should be to run a tight meeting, set the ground rules and not suffer fools gladly.
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p>Last I checked, in Plymouth, where I live, Selectmen never engage in a discussion during open comments. They nod, say thank you and offer to put the item on next week’s agenda. It seems to work.
if the BOS really is concerned about time issues, but there are better ways to deal with time issues; for eample, limit the amount of time people have to speak. Getting rid of the public forum is a little drastic and apparently not the real reason for the change. According to the quotes in the article, at least two of the members of the BOS voted to get rid of the public forum because they are afraid of what people might bring up during the public forum.
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p>I think if you asked people in Saugus about the length of the BOS meetings, they would tell you it has not been a problem. The meetings that ran late were meetings at which the BOS was holding hearings on particular liquor licenses, not because of any person speaking at the public forum. Unlike a lot of other communities like Plymouth, which have their citizen participation segments near the beginning of the BOS meeting, the public forum at the Saugus BOS meetings was at the very end of the agenda. My guess is some people who wanted to speak probably went home if the meeting ran over 10:00 or 11:00.
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p>Not allowing any input from the citizens of the community at the governing body’s meetings sends a message to people in the community that they or their opinions do not matter. Maybe that was the appropriate attitude to have in the 1950s, but it is not the attitude local governments should have in the 21st century. They should be doing whatever they can to encourage people to become more civically engaged.
In Boston, whenever a subcommittee holds a hearing, the chair opens, allows other councilors to speak, allows invited guests and expert witnesses to speak, then allows comments from the public. Sometimes, everyone but the chair leaves the room before the community speaks, and often time limits are set, but it is all recorded.
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p>When the city council meets as the city council itself, no one else is allowed to speak. Even if a question is being asked of someone in the room not on the council (like the mayor’s liaison), either the president asks and receives the answer, or a recess is called so that the information can be gathered. There is no public discussion at the weekly city council meetings. I hope this helps.
Should there be some time set aside, even if it is fifteen minutes, for the public to address the Boston City Council during their meetings?
…it would be via town meeting. Even if the town meeting is elected, instead of a mob, run for town meeting.
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p>If Saugus is not substantially different than other towns, the selectpersons are not compensated, and if they allowed everyone to complain at every meeting, they’d likely be there at their meetings all night.
There are plenty of opportunities in local government for citizens to be heard, through voice, email, letter or presentation at most meetings. Damn shame more people don’t avail themsselves of the opportunity. It would be a more robust democracy if people tore themselves from the tube or whatever to engage.
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p>Even and sometimes, especially the PIA people make the process more interesting. I would rather see someone send in their remarks or make a date on an agenda than come full bore at a meeting, it allows all parties some preparation. Rare instances need immediate attention in an open meeting.
have public forums on their agenda and allow citizens to speak to their elected officials without having to jump through hoops. Those communities understand that one way to encourage people to participate in local government is to make it as easy as possible for them to communicate with their elected officials.
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p>The town meeting only meets a few times a year and in most communities with the town meeting form of government, the town meeting has to be called by the Board of Selectmen. Yes, people should speak up at town meeting if they have an issue relating to the budget and the bylaws, but usually participating at town meeting is not sufficient if one needs to have an issue addressed in a community.
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p>Including a public comment segment at BOS meetings during which anyone can be heard is more democratic than making it more difficult for people to address their elected officials. It also is a way for communities to encourage more civic engagement; it sends a message that the views of the public matter at all times, not just during elections. There are simple ways to make sure that the public comment segment does not take over the meeting or drag the meeting out. BTW, I doubt that in any communtiy the public forum segment of the agenda is the reason for meetings running over. In most cases, it is the public hearing segments that determine how long a meeting runs.
Town meetings have specific agendas. The requirements to get an item on the agenda is a petition signed by 10 registered voters of the town and has to be submitted either 30 or 60 days before the scheduled date of the town meeting. Any discussion has to be on the subject of the agenda item.
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p>The whole point of the public comment section of selectmen’s meetings is to allow for direct interaction on a less formal basis then needing to petition to have it on an agenda.
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p>As far as time, my wife and I routinely watch the selectmen’s meetings on our local cable channel. They are carried live, generally every other Monday night at 7:30, and rebroadcasted several times throughout the week. There are generally two or three regulars who have something to say and the time is only about 10-15 minutes. Recently, due to situation I posted down thread, the public comment time has been at least an hour and as long as two hours. The chairman of the board has done a good job of limiting the time by first allowing people who haven’t spoke about the issue to speak first and by then most of the repeat speakers don’t bother because everything they wanted to say has already been said.
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p>My involvement in the situation below has re-enforced to me the importance of the public comment section of these meetings and your point about the meetings taking a long time is one of the man reason why it should be allowed. The longer we make the meetings asking for the selectwoman to resign, the bigger the impact of the concerned citizens.
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p>I’m sure we could find so people from Middleboro that think public comment portions of selectmen meetings are pretty important.
On the other hand, I’ll suggest that the “public comment” period is mostly a manifestation of the cable broadcasting of town meetings. If the public comment period is limited to a specific period of time, maybe they’d be a bit more concise than the comment period on C-SPAN. On the other hand, maybe if the public comment period transmitted over cable (which we have cancelled) is unlimited, maybe they’ll be around until 3AM in the morning transmitting to nobody.
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p>When cable was initially established in NYC, they had a public access channel. People could broadcast anything. Maybe similar channels should be required on all cable systems.
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In Randolph we have five. And you can get your own shows on the air if you wish. Public Access Channels and the equipment to produce shows are part of the negotiations that towns have with cable companies when then set up exclusive deals. Anyone, not just citizens of the town, can get a show on public access. We have one show that is hosted by a local businessman that doesn’t live in the town. It takes about 3 hours to learn how to produce the show, and then you are pretty much on your own.
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p>We are going through our re-negotiation with Comcast right now. We actually had on of our hearings last week. I watched most of it on our public access channel. We wanted updated equipment and Comcast was fighting back a little.
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p>This is also part of the problem with permitting in Massachusetts. Cable companies and other utilities have to negotiate deals with each town individual. This includes when then want to upgrade lines, like what Verizon is having to do with the new fios service. And towns are often getting greedy about what they want and people who pay for the service are the ones who end up footing the bill.
We have two segments for public comments – one at the beginning of the meeting and a second one at the end of the meeting. Both are formal agenda items.
For a supposedly open and democratic city Cambridge severely limits public comment during City Council meetings.
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p>Basically public comment has to be approved in writing before the meeting you need to get on the list, the topic has to be germaine to the votes at hand, and you can’t be on their for more than five minutes.
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p>Fair enough we all want the meeting to run smoothly and go home, yet under this particular Mayor if he does not like the commentor that commentor is struck from the list, and he has gavelled down people well into their second or third minute and well before their fifth. All in all a system firmly in control of an almost dictatorial chair.
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p>To be fair Ken has come under a lot of criticism some valid and some invalid and there are some nutjobs that make regular appearances and talk off topic, but it never looks democratic.
And the School Committee last year was forced into acknowledging its violation of the Open Meeting law.
I can only imagine what their meetings would be like without such rules. Even selectmen/city councillors want to be home before 3 am.
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p>It is pretty easy to have an inadvertent violation of the Open Meetinngs Law, especially if anyone on the board is new to public office. As laudable are the goals of that statute, its real result is good and consistent billings for all of those hired to be town counsel.
pbulic meetings have gone late into the evening because of the public comment segment in the agenda? I know of none. And the main reason given in Saugus for stopping the public forum segment was because the selectmen wanted to know what the speaker was going to say ahead of time. As for open meeting law violations being inadvertent, if the public board follows the rule that all meeting are open unless they have one of the nine reasons for closing a meeting, then they should not be inadvertently violating the open meeting law. I was at a meeting two weeks ago which was closed because they were talking about the financial problems the board was having and they did not want the public to hear anymore. It was not an inadvertent violation of the open meeting law.
I live in Randolph, and for those of you who have not heard about this story, I’ll give a very brief overview.
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p>Above is from the Committee to Recall Maureen Kenney, for disclosure I am involved with this committee. There is additional background information on the committee website.
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p>We have been using the public comment time during the selectman’s meeting to call on Kenney to resign. We have had a good show and at least two people from the committee have spoken at each selectmen’s meeting and other residence of the town have been there speaking out against her as well.
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p>I’m also a town meeting member, we have elected town meeting, and we were not allowed to speak about this at town meeting because it was not on the agenda and there is no public comment section for items that are not on the agenda.
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p>In addition, our selectmen meeting are broadcast on our local cable channel, we have had a lot of people who came looking for the committee to help based on seeing us during the public comment portion of the selectmen’s meeting.
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p>Due to the presence of people at the selectmen’s meeting asking her to step down, one of the other selectmen has also stepped up and asked her to step down.
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p>Just my two cents but the public comment portion of selectmen meetings are very important in my town.
Public comment section for 10-15 minutes is placed on the agenda. I have not observed an incidence where it went past the alloted time, but it may have happened in the past, I’m not sure.