COMMENTARY | Honorable Commissioners:
You have lately been trying out different ways to structure your meetings, greatly restricting public comment. You said at the time that you started this that it can always be changed.
You changed it in the first place because the previous Chair greatly expanded public comment, making the meetings too long and contentious for you. But does that justify restricting our speech way beyond what we did before she expanded it?
In the city meetings, we hear presentations on agenda items before we comment on them, and we also get three minutes to talk about non-agenda items. You now allow us only one three-minute comment in a meeting, before agenda items are presented. We have to choose whether to speak to agenda items or to our own issues. If we want to speak to the current business of the county, we have to have watched another meeting first to know what we would be talking about.
That last only works if the technology works: if live-streaming works; if the video is correctly posted so we can watch it beforehand. Last week’s Admin meeting was not posted properly; we couldn’t watch it even this morning.
There is a reason that we have public meetings and seek public comment; so you can use the knowledge of the public in making your decisions. If you make that too difficult, you won’t get our knowledge before you make decisions, though you’re likely to hear about your mistakes for years afterwards, as the last Board did over the ill-fated canola grant. We aren’t paid to come to these meetings and talk to you, as my mother keeps reminding me.
There is a reason that local government meetings have a particular structure: it works, for the boards and the public. Presentations matter, and they change depending on the audience. One can comment best directly after hearing them, not 6 days after the Admin meeting presentation. The public at home can best follow the action if the comments come after the presentation. Staff give different presentations depending on who they are speaking to, and whether or not the public may comment. Things come up in presentations that call for comment, but you won’t allow us to speak at that point.
Conservatism is sticking with things that have long worked. Our last Chair was profoundly unconservative in greatly expanding comment at the meetings. Your reaction, however, is just as unconservative, discarding most opportunity for comment altogether, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It does not work for you, for the public, nor for good governance.