Assembly to consider ordinance to put time limits on testimony

PALMER — A move from the Mat-Su Borough manager aims to limit one of the portions of a meeting at which the public is given a chance to address the assembly.

Borough Manager John Moosey said his ordinance only applies to the “audience participation” portion of the meeting, during which members of the public are invited up to speak about any topic. Audience members get three minutes each and Moosey wants to have audience participation run for just one hour.

“This will just curtail off-the-cuff issues not being addressed that evening,” Moosey said.

By which he means that the public hearings, where audience members can speak to specific items the assembly is addressing that night, will remain unlimited with audience members speaking for three minutes and the borough hearing from as many as want to speak.

Indeed, the ordinance does change that part of the meeting, but does so to make firm rules about listening to everyone.

“When a public hearing lasts for one hour on any single ordinance, the assembly may continue the public hearing to (at time) later in the same meeting or until a later meeting. The assembly will not consider the ordinance without first hearing all interested persons wishing to be heard,” the ordinance states.

Moosey pointed out that even with the 60-minute limit on audience participation, there’s still going to be quite a bit of opportunity for off-the-cuff testimony.

“December was unusual, but I think we probably had seven meetings and every one of those meetings had a public comment time, so there’s seven hours right there,” Moosey said.

He acknowledged that late meetings do take up staff time, since many staff members attend the meetings. But he said there isn’t a fiscal concern here.

“That’s not the reason for that. We need to be open and receptive to the public and that’s where publicly the borough’s business is taken care of,” the manager said.

But what is a concern is how late the meetings run.

“Our meetings start at 6 and many of them go all the way down to midnight and that’s not unusual,” he said. “This is just my attempt to kind of limit that so they can focus on the business of the assembly.”

The last time the issue of limiting public testimony came up was during a meeting in September packed with people wanting to speak about the issue of coal mining near Sutton. There was a coal issue before the assembly that night, so testimony came during the public hearings.

Mayor Larry DeVilbiss, saying that one of his main duties in his office is to run the meetings and keep them moving forward efficiently, put a time limit on testimony that the assembly heard. Members of the anti-mining camp who didn’t get a chance to speak before the time limit was reached cried foul and held a noisy protest outside of a subsequent assembly meeting before coming inside to testify during audience participation.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.