Pittsfield Council Rejects 5-Minute Public Comments
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Public comment will remain limited to three minutes.
The City Council on Tuesday rejected Daniel Miraglia's request to change the open-mic public comment period at council meetings from three to five minutes when 20 or fewer speakers sign up.
It failed 0-8, with two councilors absent and one who left before the vote. The councilors urged constituents to contact them instead so that matters could be dealt with outside of the podium in council chambers, where conversation is one-sided.
"I think it's a much better way to communicate with us through a phone call or an email or even if you see us out somewhere to talk about an issue on a deeper level than just the three minutes at open mic, or even if it were five," Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi said.
"There's a lot of supporting information that is often missed in those discussions, one-sided discussions, and for me, I just, I can't support it."
Councilor at Large Alisa Costa was glad Miraglia brought the petition forward because it is a healthy discussion when thinking about engaging with residents. Still, she didn't believe it was the correct path forward.
"Sometimes it's easier to get us all at once here but that's not a discussion. You're making a declaration there and we're not even allowed to respond in the middle of that and have any kind of discussion about it so it's not really helpful to lengthen it," she said.
"If you want to impact my decision or share information with me, I encourage you to reach out to me. Mr. Miraglia did not do that on this issue either. So if we're going to have a discussion and debate that's how we can have it and there's less pressure. You're not up in front of a mic and on TV. So I really hope we continue to think about how we can make open mic better or how we can engage residents better in government but I don't think that's the way to do it."
On Sept. 23, the Ordinances and Rules Subcommittee unanimously rejected the petition.
Miraglia said many people have trouble speaking and toward the end of three minutes, they are rushed to wrap it up.
"Most of your important points are towards the end and I think three minutes is just not enough time to deliver. Watching City Council meetings and attending City Council meetings, I see a lot of people get rushed and don't know how to fit and finish their statements, or their statements are not completely finished," he said.
"There's a lot of council meetings that you see something on the agenda, and they go, 'Oh, man, I wish I could speak on that,' but you've only got three minutes and you got to put everything into three minutes and my time is important too. When I take time out of my day to come here and I've got something important saying I might not be able to do that in three minutes."
He feels that five minutes is a practical time but recognizes that if 20 people want to speak, it should be limited to three minutes.
Subcommittee members disagreed.
"I've been doing this for a long time and what I found is, if you are succinct and you come forward and you write out what you have to say, I have found that three minutes is enough," Councilor at Large Kathy Amuso said.
"And if we move it up to five, then five minutes isn't going to be enough. If we moved it to 10, sometimes 10 wouldn't be enough for people."
She added that most of the time, people coming before the council have already done spoken to councilors, the mayor, or department heads about their issue.
Being in his 11th year on the council, President Pete White finds three minutes sufficient because constituents can contact them in so many other ways.
"While it's important to listen to everyone, it's not the only way to reach out to us and for more important matters or matters that are going to take more discussion, we send them to subcommittee where that three minutes is not really there," he said, pointing out that the Gettysburg Address summed everything up pretty quickly in under three minutes.
After doing some quick math, he reported that 19 people speaking for three minutes is 57 minutes of open mic and 19 people speaking for five minutes is 95 minutes of open mic.
"There is no state law saying that we have to have [public comment,]" he said.
"There are some councils that have it after the meeting, which I think would be pointless, so I think three minutes has been a pretty fair number over the years."
Lampiasi pointed to all of the other venues where a candidate or individual is given three minutes to speak before a group of people, which is particularly generous when many want to speak.
If the purpose of open mic is to win favor to a certain way of thinking on an issue, it is really helpful to be able to fully engage with a resident, she added, because there may be information that the constituent doesn't have before them and being to share back and forth is helpful to both parties.
"I don't think that the one-sided nature of open mic is helpful if we're not able to have that full dialog and that's where emails and phone calls and seeing us out in the community comes in," she said.
"I'm sympathetic to those who feel that it's difficult to make their thoughts more concise to three minutes but I encourage you, as you write out what you want to say, look at the bullet points of what you're there to talk about and hit on those bullet points and the message will be received. We will understand where you're going with things."
Tags: public comment,
