Wait Just a Dang Minute, Swami:
Are you as outraged as I am that Waukegan would even consider putting a muzzle on we, the people, who want to get up and speak our piece during City Council meetings? What kind of police state are we living in?
Love Always,
Vox Populi
Vox, Vox, Vox:
Remain calm. Sure, the Waukegan Town Fathers have rattled their sabers about dumping Audience Time, but it might just end up being an empty threat.
But if there is any outrage to be had here, it is that there wasn't a simultaneous move to dump Aldermen's Time.
Seriously. Have you ever sat through a Waukegan City Council meeting? Neither has the Swami, who usually watches it on Comcast to battle insomnia. Two hours of people speaking just to hear themselves speak. The Usual Suspects, week after week, railing on about the same pet issues, while everyone who opposes them literally rolls their eyes to keep from falling asleep. This is not productive discourse. It is a squabbling family that has tuned one another out.
Realistically, the business of the City of Progress can be taken care of in a clean, quick 30 to 45 minutes. Gag the gadflys, collar the aldermen and put the busywork stuff like "APPROVE PAYROLL" and "MOTION TO PAY THE ANNUAL SPECIALIZED RESPONSE TEAMS MEMBERSHIP DUES" on this wonderful clearinghouse tactic called a "consent agenda." Ten unanimous votes for the price of one, bah-dah-boom, done.
This way, there will be no more counterproductive squabbling ... and everyone will get home for the second half of "Monday Night Football."
Like anything else, public comment time is fine when it's used intelligently and constructively. Unfortunately (also like anything else) it is open to abuse and manipulation and often seems to defeat its own purpose.
We recently had a couple of real hot-button issues in our local government that proved this to be true. Whole families signed up at 3 minutes per person - a move obviously perpetrated by the virulently activist mater familias of the clan - to spout the same view, ad nauseam and ad infinitum, turning the Commissioners' meeting into an even bigger yawnfest than usual and prompting the Board to stick to its original position out of spite. Moreover, the adult speakers showed very poor judgment in shoving their petrified small children to the lectern to lisp their parents' prepared comments as their own.
The KISS principle applies. Regrettably, those with overblown egos and delusions of grandeur choose to ignore it.