Citizens wishing to address the Fayette County Board of Commissioners will still be able to do so near the beginning of the meetings.
The commission flirted with the possibility of moving public comments to the end of the meeting, but instead commissioners agreed at a workshop Wednesday to leave the public comments near the top of its bi-weekly agenda.
Moving the comments to the end of the meetings would have prevented citizens from being able to speak to the commission about items on that meeting’s agenda until after the commission made its decisions, noted Commissioner Lee Hearn.
“I think it is appropriate for the public to have the opportunity to comment about items actually on our agenda, so if they’re opposed to a contract that’s being awarded or whatever it is … it would be open for them to have an opportunity to make comments,” Hearn said.
Moving the public comments to the end of the agenda was proposed several weeks ago by Commission Chairman Herb Frady, who at that time noted that some citizens have become “boisterous” with their remarks. A number of citizens have taken to using the public comments on a routine basis to criticize the commission, in particular Frady, Hearn and Commissioner Robert Horgan for their support of the West Fayetteville Bypass project.
Frady indicated at Wednesday’s meeting that he changed his mind, and he supported keeping public comments at the beginning of the meetings.
Commissioner Steve Brown, who opposed moving the citizen comments to the end of the commission’s meetings, credited the public for helping sway the commission on the issue.
The decision was made informally as the commission held a lengthy discussion on a list of rules and regulations that govern how commission meetings are run.
Many of the changes are housekeeping in nature but Brown challenged more than a dozen of them, some for poor word selection and others for what he contended were attempts to “regulate personal conduct.”
Noting that the new rules forbid personal attacks, inappropriate remarks and derogatory comments, Brown said he was concerned that there were no definitions for them. Absent the definitions, such could be left up to interpretation and to a suppression of citizens’ and commissioners’ right to free speech, Brown argued.
