Council to Consider Citizen Comment Limitations

Tuesday night has a small Council agenda, but a proposal in how citizens can address their elected officials could attract residents to listen in.

Per the Council packet and action sheet, the City Clerk’s office was tasked to do a survey of neighboring municipalities regarding citizen comment periods at Council meetings. They got feedback from nine municipalities across the region – Brookfield, Greenfield, Menomonee Falls, Mequon, Muskego, New Berlin, Oak Creek, Pleasant Prairie and South Milwaukee. They focused in on several aspects – time limits, resident requirements, whether people can speak as a representative, and when citizen comment period takes place at their meetings. Additionally, they took notes if anything was significant. Here are the findings:

Based on this research, a suggested revision of Franklin’s Ordinance regarding citizen comment period was included in the Council packet. These revisions (shown underlined in the packet) include:

• The citizen comment period shall not exceed 30 minutes, unless the City Council shall decide to extend the time for a specified amount of minutes, upon passage therefore of a supermajority vote.
• During the citizen comment period, no person shall speak for longer than three minutes at each Council meeting, regardless of the representation of others by the person, unless the City Council shall direct otherwise to an individual.
• City Council direction shall take the form of unanimous consent.
• Each person may only speak once during the citizen comment period.
• Comments by the person must be directed to the presiding officer at the meeting.
• The citizen comment period is not a question-and-answer session. Council members and City staff shall not engage in dialogue during the citizen comment period.
• Repetitive, irrelevant, or disruptive comments shall be ruled out of order.
• The presiding officer may issue warnings, terminate comments, or direct removal of a person or persons if necessary to improve efficiency, ensure fairness, and/or maintain an orderly meeting.

It is not known what initiated the Clerk Office’s research of neighboring municipalities, nor is it known why these changes are being proposed for Franklin. It should be noted that some of these items may be in conflict with current Council proceedings previously adopted, and some of these items are currently already in place or applied. An example would be the 3 minute rule.