Speakers at Public Forum: Is there a Potential Compromise?

I have developed what I feel may be a good compromise on the issue of speakers at our meetings sharing minutes.  I will present it tomorrow and we will see if it garners support....

I relinquished the chairmanship of the Escambia Board of County Commissioners last month, and a lot has happened in the short period of time since I handed the gavel to my counterpart in District 3.

We brought in a new member to our board, Robert Bender from District 1.

We began a new policy--which I think is outstanding and I strongly support--where we will start doing one of our two monthly meetings during the day and combine it with what was previously an "agenda review" meeting held during the day. 

This change will allow us to be more efficient, and will free-up staff to concentrate on doing their day-in, day-out jobs in the afternoons following this new, daytime meeting.  (Under our previous format, we did two monthly review meetings where we reviewed the material prior to that night's regular meeting.  Then, we would do  a second meeting the same date, except at night, where the same topics would be covered.  And our entire compliment of senior staff was expected, and were, present at both meetings.  It was what we always did but it was inefficient.  Kudos to Chairman May for making this very good change) 

Under Chairman May's new initiative, the second meeting of the month will be during the day, and will be a combination of what was previously a day review and a night meeting.

And this is a great idea I strongly support.

But one thing has changed that I think still might need some minor tweaking.......

The Public Forum speaker's rules have also been changed abruptly...

We previously would allow speakers who did not wish to speak the opportunity to "cede" minutes to another speaker who wanted to speak on the same topic.   And some speakers would get multiple citizens to "cede" minutes to them so that they could expound on a topic beyond the simple 3 minute time limit.

The newly imposed rule disallows this prior practice.  Everyone can and will be heard, but nobody can "give" minutes to their fellow speakers.  That's the new rule
While I believe this new protocol has it's attractive qualities---I do think there are some issues which require more time to describe.

I also think there are some folks who do not like to speak publicly.  This policy effectively boxes them out.

So here is where I think a compromise may be appropriate--because there is nothing wrong with a person compromising, as long as that person is not compromising his/her integrity or going against a core value/belief.

I believe it is fair, and also efficient, to allow a LIMITED amount of sharing of minutes at public forum. 

The CONs of the current Policy:

--If we tell folks they can no longer "share" minutes, this all but guarantees that more speakers will speak now, and they will more than likely read scripted speeches and take the maximum time.

--folks that are afraid of public speaking may stop attending out of frustration

--fewer will not simply "wave in support"--but rather speak for their full allocation of time to make a point about their anger over the new policy.  This may make meetings go longer

A SUGGESTED COMPROMISE  (Below is my suggested compromise that I will bring up tomorrow)

1.  Allow for sharing of minutes on a limited basis
2.  Speakers who want to speak receive the full 3 Minutes.
3.  Speakers who want to cede time to another citizen can either speak for 3 Minutes themselves or  if they so choose, they may cede a maximum of 1 minute.
4.  No more than "5" speakers can cede time to any one person, and any person receiving minutes ceded from other citizens may only receive a total of 5 minutes of ceded time.
5. No individual speaker can speak for more than 8 minutes total

I believe if we can massage the current policy, we can still be efficient and simultaneously we can keep alive a long-running practice that encourages citizen input.  In short, I think we can achieve a win-win compromise.

I'll suggest this as a compromise tomorrow, we shall see how it is received by my peers.