Madison councilors limit speakers to 3 minutes

Madison Town Council meetings, set as they usually are in the town’s small office, can seem informal, almost like a group of friends gathering to talk about recent goings on.

That atmosphere is expected to change somewhat following a vote last week at the council’s meeting to place limits on the public’s speaking. The council voted unanimously Aug. 6 to stop residents attending the monthly meetings from speaking longer than three minutes.

The measure allows residents to speak an additional two minutes if they want to rebut something mentioned after their initial three minutes. The council also voted unanimously to require citizens to state their name and address before speaking.

“Sometimes meetings can go very, very late and typically what you try not to do is — and this is no offense to anybody — get into a dialogue with the public,” Councilor Dan Painter said during the discussion that preceded the council’s votes. “We can just sit here and have a conversation all night long. But if we have an agenda with 20 things on it that we have to get through and the first item takes us three hours to get through, it’s going to be a long night.”

Vice Mayor Nancy Knighting echoed Painter. “No offense to anyone either, but some people just keep repeating what they already said and we’re not getting anywhere.” Knighting said.

Audience member Gay Kulenguski, who regularly attends and speaks out at town council meetings, wondered aloud at last week’s meeting if the new measures would overly restrict citizens’ input.

“Does this allow at least a sentence or does everyone have to sit there completely quiet like as if they had a shoe in their mouth?” the North Main Street property owner asked. “We just had this little round right here where it was not necessarily a conversation but it was all input and it was pretty productive.”

“The goal [of the new speaking limits] is to maintain order,” replied Madison Mayor Willie Lamar. He later added, “Three minutes is a long time.”

Madison Planning Commissioner Ron Taylor, also speaking at last week’s meeting, mentioned one local official who speaks frequently at the town meetings and who has something of a reputation for being blessed with the gift of gab. “He can use up his [three minutes] pretty quick,” Taylor said, drawing laughs from the meeting attendees.

Much of the discussion that preceded the vote to limit residents’ speaking centered on how to signal to a speaker that his or her time was up.

“Does [Town Clerk] Barbara [Roach] really want to sit there with a little buzzer for every person?” asked Kulenguski. “There has to be some sort of sense of reason — I just can’t think she’d want to be the timer police.”

Roach responded, “We can find [Mayor[ Willie [Lamar] a big gavel and go for it.”

The Madison Town Council meets at 7 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month in the town office.