In a letter sent to residents Thursday (June 20) Avondale Estates’ Board of Mayor and Commissioners say they are going to enforce a “public comment policy” which, according to the letter was formally adopted July 23, 2018.
This sudden enforcement is ostensibly in reaction to the city’s last two sessions, a June 3 work session and June 13 special-called meeting that led to creating an Urban Redevelopment Agency. This move was almost unanimously rejected by those public commenters who showed up to the two sessions lasting nearly eight hours combined.
But in truth the city’s had an unlimited and unstructured pubic comment attitude for years. Public comment can and will detonate at any time during any Avondale meeting or work session. Commenters sometimes speak at the podium, but mostly they don’t. Sometimes they raise their hands, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they stand up and sometimes they remain sitting barking comments, advice and criticisms.
Often citizen commenters exchange interminable banter with commissioners, leading to overly long meetings, strung-out tempers and the lingering aura of a particularly subversive kindergarten class.
During an August 2017, work session, citizen commenters argued bitterly against creating a seemingly innocuous 25-yard path that would've linked Exeter Road, in southern Avondale Estates, with the Forrest Boulevard/Craigie Avenue curve in unincorporated DeKalb. Over a dozen commenters complained about "outsiders" such a path would attract, along with security problems, crime and lack of police protection.
While being gently escorted from City Hall by Police Chief Lynn Thomas, one man shook his fist at commissioners and concluded, “If we lose one child or have one daughter raped, that’s one too many!”
Commissioners quietly rejected the path.
A few months later another work session, with an agenda that wasn’t particularly controversial, lasted four hours, 45 minutes. A reporter keeping an impromptu scorecard tallied 32 separate commenters, with citizen comments and commissioner responses to comments totaling over 3½ hours. One resident alone offered 18 separate comments, a feat deserving of the “Guinness World Records.”
This contrasts to almost any other board in any other city. Decatur’s commission generally (although there are exceptions) allows for public comment before and after action agenda items are discussed. There is no time limit, though it’s generally understood to keep comments economical. Commissioners do not exchange any dialogue with commenters, a standard practice nationally. Commissioners respond to public comments only during their own comment period at the end of meetings.
Meantime Decatur’s school board allows one public comment portion per monthly meeting, with speakers required to sign up before the meeting and often (though not always) getting a three- or five-minute limit. As with the commission, board members don’t respond directly to commenters.
Avondale now says they revising their own policies along similar lines. The new policy includes:
• Each commenter is limited to 2 minutes on agenda items and 3 minutes in the general comment period at the end of the meeting.
• Commenters must wait to be recognized by the mayor before speaking. The mayor may give preference in the general comment period to those who have not previously [spoken] on an agenda item.
• Attempts to engage the board of mayor and commissioners or city staff in discussion is a violation of the policy
• Any speaker behaving in a manner not consistent with the Public Comment Policy, or with norms of professional decorum generally, may be asked to leave the building.
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