Alamance County’s board of commissioners has adopted a new meeting policy that preserves its twice-monthly public comment periods while imposing new time limits on the board’s own remarks from the dais.
The commissioners passed these new protocols by a margin of 4-to-0 on Monday after more than two months of hemming and hawing over a staff-generated proposal that made its debut in December.
The rules that the commissioners ultimately adopted retained a staff level suggestion to label their first meeting of the month as a “work session,” while retaining the public comment period that currently kicks off all of the board’s regularly-scheduled gatherings. The new policy also shifts the board’s responses to public comments so they occur immediately after the commissioners hear from their constituents. It nevertheless limits each board member to 3 minutes for his or her response to these comments – and gives each commissioner a maximum of 5 minutes to share any other remarks they may have at the end of each meeting.
These new procedures were pieced together from some staff recommendations that Alamance County’s manager Heidi York had pitched to the commissioners in December.
Under the staff’s original draft, the commissioners would’ve stricken their usual public comment period from their first semimonthly meeting, which generally takes place on the morning of the first Monday each month. This morning meeting would, moreover, be billed as a “work session” to indicate its purpose as a venue for long staff reports and board deliberations. In the meantime, the board’s second meeting, which falls on the evening of every third Monday, would preserve the public comment period and, additionally, focus on items that are ripe for a vote.
These modifications fell flat with most of the commissioners when they were unveiled on December 15 – with several board members arguing for the preservation of both public comment periods contrary to the staff’s recommendation. Some of the commissioners also insisted that the staff had sidestepped the board’s original intent for reviewing their meeting procedures. This objective, they said, was to address the long delay between the public comment periods at the start of each meeting and the board’s designated time for replying to these comments, which had come at the end of the board’s proceedings.
In response to these criticisms, York agreed to tweak the staff’s recommendations to suit the board’s wishes, and she returned with this revised draft when the commissioners convened their latest regularly-scheduled gathering on Monday.
Kelly Allen, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, assured the rest of the board that, with the restoration of two public comment periods a month, the staff’s revised rules were a vast improvement over the status quo. She argued that the distinction between “work sessions” and regular “business meetings” would be invaluable to residents who’ve previously sat through lengthy staff presentations and board deliberations to hear items pertinent to themselves.
“The reason [for the new policy] is to streamline our meetings so you don’t sit for three hours waiting to hear from us,” she insisted. “That way everybody has a chance to listen to what’s going on, read up on it, and then come back at the next meeting and vote on it.”
Although the proposed dichotomy had initially raised the eyebrows of some county commissioners, a majority of the board was more comfortable with the idea when it came back up for consideration on Monday. Commissioner Ed Priola, for instance, contended that a division between work sessions and business meetings may even avoid some leaps to judgment that he believed had characterized some of the board’s prior decisions.
“I like the idea of more systematic consideration of the stuff that comes before us,” he went on to declare.
At the same time, however, commissioner Pam Thompson observed that the staff’s revised meeting procedures still didn’t do anything about the delay between public comments and the board’s own replies.
“After all of that, which sounds great, we’re still going to save our [responses] to the end of the meetings,” she added. “I think it would be better public relations if we got right back to them [with our replies].”
Priola went on to concur with Thompson’s contention and encouraged her to make a motion to that effect. Allen ultimately gave in to the duo’s preference, although she suggested a time limit on these responses – an idea she had originally proffered in December to decidedly mixed reviews.
The board went on to accept a 3-minute time limit on each commissioner’s response to remarks aired during the public comment period. They also acceded to a 5-minute cap on the final remarks that will continue to punctuate all of their meetings.
The board proceeded to adopt the new rules in a 4-to-0 decision – a unanimous margin in light of the recent death of the board’s fifth member John Paisley, Jr.
