Rex Scott represents District 1 on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
It’s vitally essential that residents are in a position to tackle elected officers to share their issues and opinions. These of us privileged to serve in workplace want to listen to from the folks we symbolize in order that we are able to higher act of their curiosity. In Arizona, any elected physique can add a phase for public remark to their assembly agendas.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors has included time for our constituents to deal with us in our conferences for a few years. The foundations and rules governing our public remark interval merely say this:
On Name to the Public, an individual needing to talk will tackle the Chair. Upon being acknowledged, the particular person will advance to the rostrum, state his/her full identify, whom he/she represents, and state the subject material.
As you possibly can see, the Board locations no limits on the entire period of time allotted for public remark. On this regard, we differ from each different elected physique in our space. The cities and cities, faculty districts and Pima Neighborhood Faculty have insurance policies that restrict the period of time dedicated to public feedback.
At our June 6 assembly, I can be asking my colleagues to vary our insurance policies for public remark as follows:
Name to the Public shall be scheduled for one hour every assembly except prolonged by majority vote of the Board of Supervisors. Audio system shall have three minutes to talk. Nonetheless, for any assembly the place 20 or extra people have submitted speaker playing cards, every speaker’s time shall be restricted to 2 minutes.
Though not listed in our present insurance policies, the three-minute time restrict for every speaker has been the usual for our board and former boards. We now have not beforehand restricted the entire period of time, nor have we lower particular person time primarily based on numerous audio system. Current conduct by these signing as much as communicate at our conferences has demonstrated the necessity for these new guidelines.
One in all our native political events has actively inspired their members to enroll to talk at our conferences. Their county chair speaks at each assembly, as do a lot of his officers and precinct leaders. They coordinate their messaging, put together indicators to show and generally put on the identical clothes. At latest conferences, they’ve constituted the vast majority of public audio system. Generally they tackle agenda objects we can be contemplating, however additionally they touch upon state and nationwide points.
These activists are free to hold on as they’ve, however the public remark interval shouldn’t serve primarily as a venue for orchestrated partisan habits. It’s arrange so that each one residents can categorical their issues to the supervisors about problems with significance to them. If a political get together needs to make use of this time to make its speaking factors, it will possibly achieve this, but it surely can’t have free rein to dominate this public discussion board.
This kind of organized use of Name to the Public shouldn’t be new. The earlier board, when it was contemplating taking Operation Stonegarden grant funds, typically noticed their public remark intervals dominated by opponents of the county taking these monies. Once more, teams have the best to talk to the Board in massive numbers, however we’ve the best to limit the efforts of anybody group to monopolize this time. We even have the best, as all different native elected our bodies already do, to restrict the period of time dedicated to public feedback.
I hope that the opposite 4 supervisors will be a part of me in embracing these affordable reforms. Devoting an hour every assembly to public feedback and limiting particular person speaker time when we’ve massive numbers signal as much as communicate exhibits our dedication to listening to from our residents, however mitigates towards one group hogging the ground to additional their very own ends. This logic ought to particularly apply to political events, who actually have the means to advance their partisan arguments in locations aside from inside a public assembly.