ROYALSTON – The Selectboard is continuing to review a proposal to enact a formal policy establishing rules for public comment at meetings.

Chair Deb D’Amico broached the subject at the board’s last meeting on March 7. She has spoken with officials in Athol, Orange, Petersham, Templeton, Warwick and Winchendon to get details on each community’s policy regarding public participation at municipal board meetings.

“All of those towns do have a comment period, typically at the beginning,” she said. “One town, Orange, had it at the beginning and at the end. I asked if there was a formal policy that the boards had adopted and in all communities, except one, none of those towns had (written) policies.”

D’Amico hopes to balance the desire of Royalston residents to speak on different topics with the board’s need to meets its responsibilities in an efficient manner.

“We want to hear from the public, but we also have work to do,” she said. “It needs to be done thoughtfully and without interruption and none of us wants to be here for hours and hours.”

D’Amico said the public is encouraged to come to all board meetings but, by law, there’s no expectation that they participate. From her research, it’s common practice for boards to have a public comment period at the beginning of a meeting, for up to 10 minutes, where the public is invited to bring before the board any comments or any issues that are under its purview. Typically, each person is limited to two minutes for their presentation. She added that the purpose isn’t to create a debate, but to allow comments, after which the meeting continues uninterrupted

Board Vice Chair Chris Long was supportive of the idea of having a formal policy, but that it probably didn’t need to be as extensive as that employed by the Town of Templeton. As an example she cited the requirement that accommodation be made for people to speak on behalf of someone who may have a disability.

“In a town of this size, I don’t think we need that. I think the chair could easily just (say), ‘If you have a problem, this person is going to speak for you,’” Long said. “Let’s face it – the public is not going to read the policy before they come to comment—they’re just going to come because they have something to say or to ask.”

Former Selectboard member Gary Winitzer—a regular at these meetings—said he used to go to meetings of the Athol Royalston Regional School Committee, which allows public comment only as it relates to items on the agenda.

“It was up to the chair to decide who got to actually speak,” Winitzer said. “What was very interesting was…they could spend 15 or 20 minutes deciding whether or not to allow me to speak.”

Winitzer also suggested that copies of documents to be used at board meetings should be posted online prior to each meeting, so the public has a better understanding of the items and issues to be discussed. At present, documents are posted only after a meeting has been held.

D’Amico and Winitzer then got into a brief dispute after he insisted that the board used to include a public comment period on agendas. D’Amico said this was never the case.

“Let me see if I can send that to you so you can see,” Winitzer replied. “Because, because…”

“Gary…,” an annoyed D’Amico interrupted.

“Okay, so I guess you’re going to tell me to stop now,” said an equally annoyed Winitzer, “Because you don’t want public input from certain people and…”

“Excuse me, Gary, you are out of order,” the chair shot back. “I’m going to tell you ‘Stop.’ We invite any public comment in the appropriate way. My intent here is to invite anyone to come at the beginning of the meeting, bring to our attention whatever is important to that person – for two minutes – then we could decide whether to put that on a subsequent agenda, or not. That is the intent. Thank you for your input.”

The board agreed to have D’Amico refine her draft of the public comment policy with the intent of reviewing it at the next meeting. That meeting had been scheduled for this past Tuesday, but this week’s nor’easter forced a postponement until next Tuesday, March 21, at 1:30 p.m.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.

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