We understand why John Safford, the new mayor of Saratoga Springs, would want to start off his tenure by establishing order at meetings, especially given the way city government meetings under the previous council and mayor sometimes got totally out of control.
We certainly understand the need for such rules so the council can conduct business and so citizens can observe and ask questions.
But the new rules set by the mayor earlier this week stretch the boundaries of what’s necessary to maintain order at meetings.
For instance, one rule limits speakers to three minutes. That limit is not out of hand or unusual. But the rules allow the mayor to extend an individual’s comment time at his discretion. That sets the council up for confrontation it allows certain people to speak longer than others — inviting charges of favoritism. Set a slightly longer limit, maybe four minutes, and apply it equally to everyone.
Another issue we have is with limiting the entire public comment period to 30 minutes. This again sets the board up for accusations of favoritism and discrimination. On a controversial issue, the overall limit deprives the council of potentially valuable citizen input. From the public's point of view, the limit risks excluding people who wanted to speak but who didn’t get a chance because the 30 minutes expired.
Better to let meetings go a little longer and let everyone have their say than to exclude some speakers with an arbitrary time limit.
Another issue: There’s no reason for the council to require speakers give their name or address. It’s what the person says that should matter, not who they are or where they live. The requirement might intimidate some people from speaking, particularly those who fear for their safety if their identities are revealed in public.
We’re OK with the board prohibiting profane language and gestures, yelling or other similarly disruptive behavior. But we don’t consider hand-clapping to be a distraction or disruptive, and neither should the council.
The tricky part of all this will be enforcement. Two verbal warnings would be followed by possible removal.
We saw under the last council how having speakers removed and even arrested escalated tensions between council members and citizens. So the council needs to be very reticent to physically remove people from meetings without good cause.
In order to start off on the right foot with his new constituents, the mayor should adjust his meeting rules to give citizens more time individually and collectively to speak at meetings and should remove barriers to free expression such as requiring names and addresses and preventing people from clapping.
Setting an orderly tone for the conduct of meetings is important.
But as we’ve seen in the past, when the citizens feel their voices are being stifled, the tone can quickly sour.