1. The public are the employers of the elected board members and it is not required for them to pass an “effectiveness” criterion.

2. I find this statement incomprehensible: “Citizen participation should not be designed to provoke criticisms of government proposals or actions.”

3. Personal attacks on commissioners should simply be ruled out of line by the chair. Perhaps a rule could be instituted that personal attacks of any kind are not acceptable. I’ll leave it to the attorneys to figure out that legality.

4. The purpose of public comment periods is to allow the public to bring any subject which they consider of importance before the board. During my time as a commissioner, I found this was often a vehicle for me to learn about problems or issues that I was not aware of, and I found it useful.

5. The public is not interested in the technicality that the Ways & Means meeting is just a committee meeting. As far as they are concerned, that is the beginning of the Board of Commissioners meeting. People who wish to address the board often want to come in to the meeting, say their 5 minutes worth, and leave. It is inconsiderate to make these citizens wait through a two-hour meeting in order to speak to their concerns at the Board meeting, which does not occur on schedule so it is not possible to come in at, say, 8:00 to speak at that meeting.

I hope that the current Board will reconsider this action.

Some of the things I’d like to know include whether the county’s actual costs increased more or less than inflation during the past 5 years and why. How do our per capita costs for services compare to peer counties? How much does the county spend on consultants and what benefits did we get for the spending? How has the ratio of square footage of county buildings to total county employees changed over time? How much future tax revenue has been given away in brownfield credits and how many and what kind of jobs have actually been created as a result of these credits?

I spent quite a bit of time analyzing county finances 5-10 years ago. My conclusion was that the county was engaged in a high risk strategy that involved using up reserves and taking on debt to build new buildings. As long as the county benefited from increased tax revenues from the sprawl, they could pay the bill but those days are gone. But the addiction to buildings is hard to break and the county is continuing with building projects despite the deficits.

The high risk strategies continue. The BOC recently approved borrowing $160 million to put in the VEBA (retiree health care plan). The only advantage to doing this is if the 160 million can can be invested in the market and earn a higher return than the interest rate on the debt. If it works, everyone is happy but if it doesn’t, the county is in an even deeper hole. Useful budget information would be showing what would happen if things did not work out as planned.

The amazing hardship we are all going to face is part of the reason I posited the change to our public process at the Ways and Means Committee. Our meetings are the decision points in what needs to be a focused and deliberative public engagement strategy. While I understand the concerns that are being voiced about the reduction in speaking time from five to three minutes and the restriction to issues germane to the agenda, I’ve watched (and occasionally chaired) these meetings carefully for the past couple of years and you can trust that the reforms are not intended, nor will they be managed in such a way as to, infringe on the right of citizens to bring issues before the committee.

Frankly, the public comment period at our meetings is the least effective and least substantive means for influencing county government. It is an archaic tool, little more than an excuse not to engage in a more robust public participation process. I will not go so far as to say it is a complete waste of the public’s and the staff’s time, but it is close. It is our main means for citizen engagement and as such violates the most fundamental aspects of effective public participation:

* It comes too late in the process for meaningful change to be realized.
* It is not structured to create a dialogue among the stakeholders.
* It focuses attention on a single sector of the community and a single aspect of the issue at hand.
* It is not targeted at a specific decision, policy, project or program.

In all, our public comment time is frustrating for everyone involved. It is my intent to change that by driving a more meaningful and useful public engagement process, of which public comment at meetings is an important, but small, component.

On their face, reducing the time for comment and restricting the subject matter to agenda items could certainly be seen as an attempt to squelch public debate. It would be unfair, however, to take those actions out of the context of the more serious need for effective over traditional citizen engagement. To mitigate any negative impact of these reforms, I’m taking two direct actions:

* Citizens will be invited to improve the effectiveness of their testimony by providing written comments in advance of the meeting that will be incorporated into the public record; and
* I am inviting citizens and organizational representatives to discuss their concerns directly with me in advance of the meetings so the board can evaluate the need for a more extensive comment period or public hearing.

With regards to keeping comments germane to the agenda, it is important to note that no change was made to the board of commissioners meeting. The only change was to the Ways & Means committee process. Any issue can be brought before the board and the time limit there is still five minutes. Similarly, the guidelines for the Working Session remain unchanged. Furthermore, the ninth item on every Ways & Means committee agenda, per the rules we adopted Wednesday night, is “Items for Current/Future Discussion”; this maximizes the leeway for topics that can be brought before the committee. What is never germane are the personal attacks on individuals that have increasingly become part of public comment at our meetings. I fully intend to gavel those down and feel completely justified in that by our community’s deeply-rooted support for civil discourse.

As chair of Ways and Means, it is my intent to focus the discussion from the citizens and the board members with these reforms on the issues at hand during the budget process. I will, however, carefully evaluate the impact of the meeting process changes we instituted; if they have had a detrimental effect on citizen engagement, I’ll be the first to offer a retraction.

That said, our public engagement process in the development of this budget has to change — fundamentally change. Citizen participation should not be designed to provoke criticisms of government proposals or actions, as our current process does. Rather, we should strive for a deliberative process that allows community members to explore the implications of the various policy trade-offs we are faced with, as partners rather than subjects. I intend to design a budget process that is transparent and accessible, that treats the concerns and perspectives of our community partners with respect.

We will begin with intentional outreach to the community to raise awareness about the issues we are facing and the process we intend to undertake. There will be a period of information gathering and public education, which will very likely include nontraditional governmental strategies like web forums, workshops and listening sessions. We will have a formalized process for collecting an analyzing community and stakeholder group (including our unions, the business and nonprofit sectors, and users of county services) recommendations. The recommendations the board makes will have ample time for public review and feedback before they are adopted as policy.

I accept that the reforms to public participation at the Ways and Means committee might cause some initial distress — change does that. I urge everyone, however, to fairly consider how (I would argue if) our public comment period effectively contributes to the outcome of better policy and service delivery options rooted in a more substantive understanding of community-wide values and priorities. And to consider if a five-minute comment is the best way to achieve that outcome, or just the way we have become long accustomed to.

While the rule about timing and content has changed for one of our committees, what is ultimately intended is more meaningful and more plentiful citizen engagement in the county’s governing process. I trust you will give us the chance to explore a different way of doing business that is more satisfying for the board, the staff and the electorate.

Yes – our version of Kabuki theater. But that’s why we love Robert’s Rules.

The new chair, Rolland Sizemore Jr. joined Jeff Irwin in voting against the Rules and Regulations. Though he did not speak to it, it was my impression that his vote reflected agreement with Irwin’s objections to the rule change.