At the last Fullerton City Council meeting, newly elected 4th District representative Jamie Valencia proposed reducing the time allotted to each general public commenter from three to two minutes. Her reasoning was to produce more efficient meetings. The motion failed 3-2 with Nick Dunlap, in what seems to be a trend, voting with Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles – the Council’s two obnoxious moralistic pontificators.
The speakers present at the meeting objected, as well they might. That’s because many of them are constantly haranguing the Council majority about this or that, enjoying three minutes to blather away.
And of course the semi-literate Skaskia Kennedy at the Fullerton Observer couldn’t resist angry editorializing:
“In an apparent disregard for public engagement, newly elected District 4 councilmember Jamie Valencia made a motion to reduce the time allotted for each public commentor (sic) to speak at the start of city council meetings from three to two minutes.“
The general thrust of the opposition to the motion was that this proposal was an affront to public engagement, public participation, etc., etc.
Now, these are the same people who, if given three minutes will use it up, in pointless repetition, non sequitur, and in one recent case, a minute of silence just to annoy everybody.
On the face of it, Ms. Valencia’s proposal seemed like bad politics, and maybe it was.
What seems to be missing here on the part of Dunlap, Zahra and Charles is the understanding that these speakers are members of the public, but are not “the public.” They have been chosen by nobody but themselves, and represent nobody but themselves. Some of them are driven by some inner impulse to share their mental gyrations about something or other and, if given 180 seconds, will use them all.
But, hey, wait just a second. Why must all the other members of the public in attendance, or watching online be subjected to 180 seconds of the same nonsense over and over again? Why can’t everybody else enjoy shorter, better run meetings?
No one is claiming that the right to speak at a meeting be eliminated, or that “engagement” be ended. But why not make these folk distill their comments into something more concise, more relevant and more intelligent? My own attitude is that if you can’t express a general observation, complaint, or even irrelevant philosophizing into two minutes, then there’s something wrong with you.