Wikihow
Stepping up to the microphone at a Kiawah Island Town Council meeting gives citizens a chance to speak their peace, a chance to go on record and a chance to show support or to defend a particular issue that could dramatically impact their everyday way of life.
Some citizens have a lot to say, while others like to make their points short and sweet. Either way, citizens have a right to speak at the Town Council meetings during the public comment session.
For Kiawah Island Town Council, however, it was finally time to address the time public comments get. Kiawah Island resident Maura McIlvain started the public comment portion of the August 1 Town Council meeting with a stern public comment about the possibility of limiting public comments.
On the agenda was an ordinance to amend the public comment portion of meetings to just three minutes per person, but with no overall time limit. The current ordinance has an overall time limit for public comments of 15 minutes, and individually, the time limit is five minutes.
McIlvain said, “The current ordinance limits our individual comments to five minutes, and now you are proposing limiting us to three minutes. This is a solution in search of a problem. I have been keeping track of the public comments. Last month, one person spoke; the month before that, eight people spoke; in May, eight people spoke; in January, four people spoke. This council works for us. Wouldn’t you rather have our concerns on public record, rather than us stopping to talk to you in public? Even if it is accolades! This is not a problem. There is no reason to limit us to three minutes. I can’t think of someone who even spoke for five minutes in the last several months. This sends the wrong message. I think it sends the message that you do work for us, but you wish you didn’t have to hear from us.”
Kiawah Island Town Council Member John Moffitt introduced the ordinance to amend the Town’s current municipal code related to public comments at Town Council meetings.
“The current ordinance in place has been pretty limiting. We can only have 15 minutes of comment time total. That’s very restrictive. I tried to do two things: one was to remove that overall time, and we need to address the time that each individual currently has,” he said.
The question from Moffitt was, should individuals have some sort of time limit or should Council vote to remove time limits altogether for public comments?
Kiawah Island Town Council Member Russell Berner suggested keeping it at five minutes per person. Kiawah Island Town Council Member Michael Heidingsfelder noted, “I would support that. We need some clarity.” And Town Council Member Bradley Belt concurred that he would support that too.
Belt added that Council should be able to have the discretion to extend the time as needed.
However, Kiawah Island Mayor John Labriola was in favor of removing a time limit for individual public comments altogether. “I would get rid of the time limit. God bless them. If they want to come and they want to talk and they are nervous and anxious, I don’t want to be doing a ‘ding, ding, ding.’ That’s cumbersome. We will know if someone is rambling and we can say to them, ‘you’re rambling.’”
Ultimately, the ordinance to amend the municipal code about public comments unanimously passed with changes to it. The time limits were taken out completely, and the portion of the ordinance that says that members of the public cannot ask Council questions during their public comments was also removed.
Moffitt said, “If someone asks us a direct question, we can answer it. However, we cannot debate. For example, someone made a public comment about saving our trees earlier and asked us if we are getting an ordinance in place for that. The answer is yes. But when the commenter said they thought it was taking too long, well, that is their opinion and we can’t answer that.”
Labriola concluded, “This issue falls under a broad rubric of interaction between volunteers, municipal, officers and the community at large. There has to be a give and take. A couple of them commented earlier of communication being sent out that needed to be qualified, so I think we should hold to that and be mindful of communication going out. If communication is inaccurate, we’ve got to be able to clarify, conversely, if they have something they want to share, they ought to be able to come and share it. I just don’t think we are that sophisticated of a community that it has to be that regulated. I think we have to be able to go back and forth.”
McIlvain approached the microphone again at the end of the meeting’s public comment portion. “Sometimes people will come up here and give you accolades and you are going to want all the time in the world to hear that. I am giving you accolades. I appreciate it. Thank you.”
