Cory Lakes CDD
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Public Comments Improvements
http://corylakescdd.sunshineboard.org/boards/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=96		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  joycehep [ Wed Feb 03, 2016 11:48 am ]
Post subject:  Public Comments Improvements
Our current policy on public comments at Board Meetings is that each person signed in is allowed 3 minutes each to speak. At the last several meetings we have had no more than 12 names written down to speak, yet this public comment time has lasted for 2+ hours. I am a huge advocate for hearing what the residents of our neighborhood have to say and I always encourage them to let us know what they want for their community. However, with the public comments portion of the meeting lasting for that long every month, we never make it through our lengthy agenda and end up cutting off important items so that we can conclude our meeting by 11:00 pm. We also rudely cut off those committees that spend many hours of their time for our community because we don't have time to get to them. I truly feel that the practice involved with this process is just hindering the success of our meetings and is an insult to those residents that are committing their time to help with the success of our neighborhood. I feel that we need to be working harder together as a unified team instead of cutting each other off because their isn't enough time.

What I'm proposing is that we stick to the policy that we have in order to ensure that we can achieve our agenda and offer the committees adequate time to share their information. Each person signed in is allowed to speak for 3 minutes. Meaning that they are welcome to say whatever they'd like to us during that 3 minutes. However, I'm asking that we don't allow this 3 minutes to turn into a discuss which seems to have been the practice at every meeting. By following this time frame, if we had our largest number of residents listed at 12 speak for 3 minutes each our public comment section of the meeting would last for 36 minutes, not 2+ hours. I'm asking that instead of discussion that the residents be advised if their topic is on the agenda and in what order and they may stick around to hear the discussion at that time. If their item is not on the agenda, then it may be moved to the comments section at the end of the meeting or will be added to our next sunshine board meeting where it can be discussed in full. I also think that we need to encourage residents to contact us outside of our meetings to discuss their personal issues and offer participation during the sunshine board as an option to communicate with all of us at one time. By holding the public comments to 3 minutes each I truly believe that this will help us as a board to be more efficient and to tackle the issues that we need to in a much more effective and timely manner. And also will offer the courtesy that we would appreciate what the committees are doing for us by not making them race through their items limiting them to 2 minutes each. They give hours of their time, offering only 2 minutes to speak is just a complete insult in my opinion.

Thank you for considering this request!
Author:  Cyril Spiro [ Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Public Comments Improvements
As the Chair of the Board, I'm responsible for setting the Agenda and managing the meeting, so I welcome the feedback regarding how the meetings are conducted.

There are three components to the message from Joyce that I will address below. One is the history of public comments. Two is addressing some of the reported details within the comment. Third is a go forward strategy.

First, in regards to the history of public comments, I have attended and participated in Board meeting for the last 5 years. When I first started attending the meetings, the level of public participation was abysmal. In addition, when residents did attempt to participate they were often cut-off or their comments were completely ignored. As a result, few residents would attend the meetings more than one time. On the other hand, the committees managed much of the meetings. The proportion of time allotted to committees versus residents was around 10:1. Often it was difficult to distinguish committee recommendations from Supervisor requests. As I became more involved in the community, the board slowly began to even out this ratio and residents became more involved during public comment. My personal opinion is that this is a good thing because traditionally committees were made up of individuals who had goals which met their personal wants and they seized the opportunity to use public funds to achieve those goals. The new tennis courts is a perfect example of this. However, the residents typically had more varied and individual goals. So, the input they provided was, in my opinion, more representative of our diverse community rather than narrow special interests of the committees. Therefore, as the Chair, I have strongly encouraged public comment and individual participation so that the board can hear more diverse opinions from residents. I also believe encouraging public comment will change long-held public opinion that attending meetings is useless because the board never listens to individual residents.

Second, in regards to some details about public comments and committee comment at the last meeting. At that meeting, public discussion was approximately 1 hour, not 2+. Of course, that is greater than 3 minutes per resident for a total of 36 minutes. And, yes we did have some discussion during public comments. The reason that I permitted the extended time and discussion was because of the reasons stated in the first section above. However, there were at least a half a dozen times that I did cut off residents and there were several times that residents were told to wait for the agenda item for discussion. They did wait and we moved those agenda items forward on the agenda so they wouldn't have to stay at the meeting late into the night. Moving those agenda items up was a unanimous board decision. Also, the committees were allocated 5 minutes each, not 2 minutes. However, the security committee discussion lasted almost 15 minutes. And, the chair of the LAF committee stated that he did not need more than two minutes because we had addressed the LAF issues with the 25+ minute discussion with LMP earlier that evening. So, there was never any intention to hold a committee to only 2 minutes and in fact committee discussions went longer when their was a need.

Third, the question remains what is our go forward strategy. It is customary across Florida governments for public comment to be held to 3 minutes per person. We can use a timer to do that. In my opinion, if a committee needs more than 5 minutes to present their points, then they should ask for specific agenda items from the District Manager ahead of the meeting. I personally strongly discourage making residents wait until the end of the meeting to discuss their issues because that has been and will be perceived as the board trying to make it difficult for residents to express their opinions which is the opposite of our jobs; to represent the residents. I agree that getting more resident participation during the sunshine board meetings would be helpful and am open to any ideas on how to get that accomplished beyond our current public outreach methods.

Supervisors, please share your opinions so we can develop a process that works for us.

Best,
Cyril
Author:  Gcas0499 [ Thu Feb 04, 2016 10:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Public Comments Improvements
Re: Public Comments Improvements
Joyce I’m partially in agreement with your comments, let me explain, Cyril is absolutely correct that we were part of the old regime that Board meetings in the past were ran very abrupt and very little order in fact the residents had very little say and there really was not much respect given to the residents that wanted to voice their opinions, in most cases concerns as we hear all the time, I’m of the opinion we should absolutely stick to the 3 minute rule from each resident and welcome them to stay thru the meeting considering we may cover some of their concerns from Agenda items. When possible we should try to move items in the Agenda that address residents concerns brought up during public comments and Cyril has done a great job at that.
I’m also in agreement we should try to further encourage more participation in this Sunshine Board public forum from Residents, perhaps we can advertise in the Islander if we haven’t.
Author:  joycehep [ Thu Feb 04, 2016 11:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Public Comments Improvements
I would just like to take a second to clarify to ensure that I am understood correctly. All other board members are very aware of the fact that I am the biggest advocate of listening to all resident concerns and even ensure that every issue presented during public comments are addressed in some fashion prior to adjournment. I TRULY believe 100% that we need to listen to residents concerns and address them. And this board has shown over and over again that we do in fact do such a thing! My concern is not in listening to the residents, my concern is just to ensure that our meetings progress forward in a more timely fashion. I would like to encourage residents to contact us outside of meetings where we can discuss their issue at hand in detail and then have it added as an agenda item prior to the meeting. The Sunshine Board is another option for longer more detailed discussions. If they can't attend the sunshine board meeting, then please contact us via email or telephone to ensure that we are able to hear their true concerns. This past meeting the public comments section went over an hour with several of the residents talking more than once to say the same thing over and over again. The meeting a couple of months prior to that the public comments section lasted until after 8pm with regards to the same select residents advocating to keep the activities the way they were. I truly understand that they are upset and I'd love to have a long discussion with this regarding their concerns, just not during business meeting time. I believe that the business meeting time needs to be conducted like a business meeting allowing us to move forward in a more timely fashion. We would love to address each of those concerns during an agenda item and I also agree that this board has always done an excellent job of moving agenda items up for residents in attendance, which I continue to encourage. Lets just not waste time rehashing comments presented. Instead encouraging those that need longer to reach out during the sunshine board or email.

As for committee time frames. I apologize if I miss quoted the time as I really had 2 minutes in my head. These committees I agree can sometimes more towards completion of their own personal agenda's at times. However, I feel that if they are spending several hours a month working on our neighborhood that we should at least extend the courtesy of listening to their meeting notes. Maybe we could give them a 10 minute limit. Obviously 5 minutes last month was too short. I just feel like we need to show our appreciation of their taking the time to work with us even if we don't always agree with what is presented to us.

For now, I would like to see the timer implemented during discussion time and can hopefully move forward still showing residents that we will address their concerns as we have done consistently throughout the past year.
Author:  Robert Woodards [ Thu Feb 04, 2016 5:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Public Comments Improvements
Well, well, all three of you have some valid points. However, I can't emphasize enough just how important it is for us to keep the residents involved and attending meeting, further making them feel not only are we listing to their concerns but, we are also taking appropriate action where feasible within budget constraints. We did have a couple people that were in the repeat mode which ate up quite a bit of our time at the last meeting. How do we stop that? Maybe by asking people not to rehash topics that has been previously discussed.
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