Councilors spar over meeting agenda

The Wednesday October 9, 2013 issue of the Record Journal carried a story titled Councilors spar over meeting agenda.

The article basically outlines the current situation where Town Councilor Nick Economopoulos was denied the opportunity to place an item on the agenda for Tuesday’s Town Council meeting.

The Chairman of the Town Council Robert Parisi and the Vice Chair Vincent Cervoni indicated they would not add the item to the agenda – their reasoning was that nothing new was to be added to the discussion.

If you look at the Town Council rules of procedure at the top of the article the reasons available to decline an item “The Council Chairman can grant exceptions to this rule, depending on the length of a given Town Council agenda.” I read this as a compound reason – Length is the reason for the exception.

Tuesday’s meeting had a normal amount of items and we were wrapped up around 9PM; we’ve had meetings that have gone longer with less items and had other meetings with more items in general.

This goes back to the need for a more transparent local Government. More on that soon.

I will also follow up more on item 4 above as well:

”Public input on individual agenda items will be received during the discussion of the specific item, after members of the Council have had an opportunity to review and discuss the item. Individuals wishing to speak to individual agenda items will be required to address their questions or comments to the Council Chairman and limit his/ her speaking time to a total of three minutes.”

This rule has been specifically and intentionally ignored on a number of occasions and the public was not allowed to speak.