In a bid to speed up its meetings, the James City County Board of Supervisors on Friday voted 4-1 to shuffle its meeting agenda for 2015 by setting a firm start time for public hearings and pushing much of the time for public comments down the agenda.
The meetings will now start half an hour earlier, beginning at 6:30 p.m. After the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silence and any presentations to the board from groups, citizens can begin making public comments for up to five minutes. Citizens were previously given three minutes.
But at 7 p.m., that public comment period will end, and public hearings will begin. That change reflects sentiments first mentioned by the board in October, when Supervisor Kevin Onizuk (Jamestown) said during a work session that the then meeting structure created a situation in which business people and attorneys required to be present during the public hearings were often paid to sit and wait through the first public comment period.
“People are frustrated with public hearings,” Onizuk said Friday, saying citizens want the hearings to start at a reasonable time. Under the previous meeting schedule, the hearing would not begin until after the first public comment period was over, sometimes pushing them to 8 p.m. or later.
Supervisor Jim Kennedy (Stonehouse) said many people who participate in public hearings are elderly, and they do not like to be on the roads at night.
“I’ve witnessed a lot of people leave because [the public hearing they came to speak during had not yet started],” he said.
Most meetings feature at least one public hearing, when members of the public can sound off on a range of proposals and legislative changes, such as land-use issues and changes to the county code.
After the public hearings are over, a second public comment period will be held for anyone who did not speak during the first one. The previous meeting schedule also featured two public comment periods, but speakers were allowed to use both.
Supervisor Mary Jones (Berkeley) was opposed to the new meeting schedule and voted against it. She said she supported keeping the previous meeting schedule.
“We’ve received a lot of emails supportive of keeping two public comment periods,” she said. “We’re here to serve the citizens and to listen to the citizens.”
A half dozen speakers used the public comment periods during the board’s Nov. 12 meeting to keep the 7 p.m. start time and to leave the public comment periods as they were.
“Citizens who speak here on a regular basis continue to do so out of a patriotic duty to inform, educate and encourage and most importantly to hold you accountable,” Sue Sadler, a county citizen, said during that meeting.
Kennedy said the board needs to do a better job of making sure citizens are speaking to issues relevant to the board. He said some people speak during every public hearing, and some of them are not addressing issues relevant to that hearing.
“People are saying they’re being denied their right to speak to issues that will affect their day-to-day lives in their homes,” Kennedy said. “Whether it’s a development proposal, a school issue, budgetary issues. They are being denied that right. They feel it’s taking far too much time, that the meetings are going too long.”
Some citizens use the speaking opportunities during the public comment periods and public hearings to sound off on a range of issues, including the need to support the troops, concerns about the United Nations and several concerns about the federal government.
The new meeting schedule leaves intact the five minutes per speaker for public hearings and 15 minutes for people speaking on behalf of a group.
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