Board of Aldermen — 5/09/17 Page 12
Alderman Wilshire
| am not going to support this legislation. While | do understand that sometimes listening to people talk about
things that we don’t agree with or that might not be under the purview of this Board, | think it is important to
hear people and especially people who live in this city, that own property in this city. | can’t vote to stop them
from speaking to this Board, so | won’t be supporting this.
Alderman Dowd
To shed a little light on the Zoning Board, having been the previous Chair of the ZBA, what was happening
there was people were coming and testifying for hours with stacks of paper. The only thing the Zoning Board
is allow to hear are things related to the five points of law for that particular case. Seventeen years ago, give
or take a year, | instituted in support of the full Zoning Board the stop light limiting the people presenting the
case, mostly lawyers, to 15 minutes and then people rebutting was less time. What was happening was the
Zoning Board meetings had a lot on their agenda and it used to get extended into a second night which
became problematic for everyone. That’s where the ZBA came from.
| don’t think anything we have jurisdiction over that we ought to restrict anyone from speaking on it. It is very
hard, though, to determine what we have jurisdiction over. That would be another thing we would have to
decide. | would support limiting speakers during the second public comment period to 15 minutes. We used to
do that before. It might still be in place. We could enforce that and then if we want to extend it, we could have
the Board vote on it. If it is something way off base and it doesn’t pass then that person is done speaking. |
think that takes care of all of these issues. So, I’m going to recommend an amendment to O-17-033.
MOTION BY ALDERMAN DOWD TO AMEND O-17-033 BY STRIKING THE UNDERLINED WORDS IN THE
SENTENCE IN PARAGRAPH (17) AND REPLACING THEM WITH: “NO SPEAKER COULD EXCEED 15
MINUTES WITHOUT THE BOARD VOTING TO EXTEND”
ON THE QUESTION
President McCarthy
| believe, Alderman Dowd that the next sentence limits the entire public comment period to 15 minutes which
already has that effect.
Alderman Dowd
| was referring to any particular speaker.
President McCarthy
| would just point out that for anyone to speak more than 15 minutes, we need to extend the entire period as
well.
Alderman Dowd
| saw that coming. My point is that if we’re only going to have a 15 minute period that’s what we have, we
haven't recently voted to extend it. We just let it go on and on. If we have that rule in place, we ought to
enforce it. If we want to extend it then take a vote at the full Board.
President McCarthy
Do you wish to continue with your motion to amend?
