Town council members in New Paltz have made a procedural change to how their board meetings are run: from now on, all business will be placed on the consent agenda, which is approved with a voice vote and with no discussion. The new approach is expected to shorten meetings to between 20 and 45 seconds.
“We’re elected to perform due diligence, and become experts on subjects that most residents simply don’t have the time to understand fully,” said Supervisor Neil Bettez. “Under the old system, we’d discuss our reasoning as fully as we could before we voted, and then we’d get people yelling at us if they disagreed with our decision. This system allows us to cut straight to the yelling, without having a long meeting first.”
Council member have also opted to ditch public comment entirely. According to the material made available through the committee on open government, the law “is silent with respect to public participation. While it has been advised that a public body does not have to allow the public to speak, many choose to permit public participation. In those instances, it has been advised that a public body must treat all persons in a like manner. For instance, the public body can adopt reasonable rules to ensure fairness; i.e., allowing those who want to speak a specific period of time to express their views.” In New Paltz, the specific period of time will now be zero minutes.
This does not affect public hearings, which are essentially separate events from council meetings, and which are often required under state law. For those, residents may continue to yell at elected officials and submit interminably long written comments. The change also does not in any way impact the rights of individuals to complain on Facebook.
Gerry Benjamin, an esteemed local public policy expert who helped write the county charter and ran the center on campus that now bears the Benjamin name, wholeheartedly supports this effort. “I built my career around studying civic engagement and encouraging public participation, [reporter’s name redacted], and I missed a lot of dinners with my family as a result,” Benjamin said when reached by phone. “The simple fact is that no one cares one iota until after a decision is made anyway, because only then is it possible to sue.”
Whether Benjamin’s assessment is accurate is difficult to say; none of the 319 local attorneys contacted for comment had returned the call by press time.
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