Gilbert Town Council preserved residents’ speaking time before it but pushed that public comment period back later in the meeting under new rules of conduct it adopted April 2.
Council voted unanimously to amend the town code on rules of order and procedure for mayor and council members after spending time wordsmithing the proposal from the dais.
In the end, council ditched a proposal to begin curtailing how long each speaker had to speak if 20 or more people signed up to make comments before council. Instead, the members codified three minutes as the allotted time, though council can suspend that by a super-majority vote.
“I know it would take a lot of time,” Councilmember Chuck Bongiovanni said. “We may go into the wee hours, but if a citizen wants to spend two hours telling me I'm doing a lousy job, I mean I signed up for that. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to listen.”
The limitations on public comment — called “communications from citizens” on the agenda — had been perhaps the most controversial of the proposed changes as residents said they did not want their First Amendment rights curtailed.
Councilmember Yung Koprowski said no one’s rights were being curtailed if time were shortened as they could still make their point and perhaps open the door to a better forum for discussion if enough people expressed a concern. Vice Mayor Scott Anderson used the council’s teen violence subcommittee as an example of how that works.
Councilmember Kathy Tilque also pointed out that past experiences have shown when many people speak on the same topic, it often leads to much repetition and a loss of productivity in the meetings.
But Bongiovanni said it took many speakers’ comments to form the subcommittee so he greatly preferred allowing people to speak.
The council also will allow the sharing of time up to six minutes if one speaker represents more than him or herself.
Koprowski said if council did choose to allow three minutes per speaker, she would then like to see the public hearings portion of the agenda moved up before. That way people waiting for those items to be decided did not have to wait as long.
Mayor Brigette Peterson added many people presenting at public hearings are paying for attorneys by the hour to represent them as they wait through public comment. She used the example of Western Canal residents waiting until about 1 a.m. for a resolution to their land acquisition case after an hours-long public comment period of people objecting to the Ranch light-industrial project in a November 2022 council meeting.
Those arguments prompted to move not only public hearings, but the consent agenda and administrative items to before communications from citizens.
Other changes adopted included:
Striking a section on expelling a council member from a meeting for any cause deemed sufficient by at least other members;
Requiring the mayor or three council members requesting an item to be agendized to first meet with the town manager to discuss/coordinate the scope and timeline of the proposed agenda item;
Codifying the public hearing process to follow the process already set forth in the land development code;
Formally adopting rules of decorum for public meetings;
Repealing the town’s adoption of Robert's Rules of Order and replacing them with a simplified set of Rules of Procedure that will apply to all public meetings of the town.
“What this does — and one of the things we're trying to do and we've been trying to do over a long period of time — is actually put the way we're handling meetings in writing so it's clear so the public knows what to expect,” Tilque said. “Everybody up here knows what to expect. We're not trying to make decisions under pressure, and I think that that was the key.”
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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