Public comments limited

WINSTED — Mayor Maryann Welcome made changes to the way public comment periods operate at the Monday, March 18, meeting, resulting in one member of the public being escorted out by a police officer.The changes were not voted on or agreed to by the members of the board, but were introduced and strictly enforced throughout the meeting by Welcome.Welcome made the changes in light of a selectmen’s meeting on March 4, which included several verbal attacks made on the selectmen by residents.On Tuesday, March 5, Town Attorney Kevin Nelligan sent an email to the board concerning the meeting and public comments.“I risk stepping outside my role, but I feel I need to comment on the role public comment has taken at selectmen’s meetings,” Nelligan said. “It seems public comment, as structured now, has led to a hijacking of your meetings. Instead of an organized business-type meeting where the board can conduct the town’s business, the meetings devolve into a public hearing where all manner of random complaints are aired and individuals, on both sides, are attacked.”Nelligan said in his email that public comment periods at selectmen’s meetings are not required by law.“However, it is good practice,” Nelligan said. “As public officials you are expected to have a thick skin and give the public a forum to express concerns. But as presently used, the selectmen meeting seems to take a backseat to a public hearing.”Nelligan recommended only one public comment period during meetings, a speaker only getting a chance to speak once during the period and restricting speakers from cross-examining the selectmen and Town Manager Dale Martin.“This should be a comment time, not Perry Mason time,” Nelligan said.At the March 18 meeting, Welcome continued to allow for two citizen’s comment periods.However, for the first comment period toward the beginning of the agenda, she reduced a resident’s comment time from five minutes to three minutes.She added the rule that a person can only speak once during the comment period, and the first comment period would be limited to 40 minutes.Before the first comment period, Welcome added further stipulations, that no personal attacks would be allowed and that the board would not respond directly to questions.Some of the residents in the audience criticized the mayor’s changes.The first speaker of the night, Stephen Kosinski, said he is disappointed with the board and the changes to meeting procedures.“It seems certain that certain people here have injured egos,” Kosinski said. “This is a New England-style town meeting. It is well known as the purest type of democracy, and it is open to all citizens of Winsted per section 309-B in the town’s charter.”Kosinski was pointing to the section of the charter under meetings which reads: “Regular meetings shall be held twice each month on dates to be fixed by ordinance, at which meetings any elector, property owner, or resident of said town may appear and be heard as to any business of said town.”The next speaker was Board of Education Chairman Susan Hoffnagle who supported Welcome’s changes and quoted from Roberts Rules of Order in her comments.“Town meetings are public meetings, and all townspeople can talk in a limited fashion,” Hoffnagle said. “Board meetings are meetings that must be held in public, but they are not public meetings. The board can choose to hear from the public as it normally does, and it must do so in a constitutional manner. However, it is quite common to limit speakers to a reasonable amount of time, and [the board] can require speakers adhere to reasonable standards of decorum.”Hoffnagle said she supported the idea of limiting residents’ comments to three minutes.“If these meetings have an hour or two hours of filibusters about issues then you will never any time to discuss anything,” she said. “You are elected officials, and I would like to see you using this time as officials by using this meeting time for deliberations.” The next speaker to discuss Welcome’s changes to public comments was David LaPointe, who, as he has done at previous meetings, criticized the board.“While [Hoffnagle] said, in effect, we don’t have a right to speak at meetings, according to our charter we do,” LaPointe said. “As you try to abridge the public’s speaking because you don’t like to hear what we say, you have to try to stop overspending. You need to listen to the people and not shut us off and give us a three measly minutes to speak before this body, which has elected you and put you in office. People of this town need to know that this government is not representing people, it is representing unions and the bureaucracy that comes with it.”Welcome notified LaPointe that his speaking time had expired, but LaPointe continued to speak for a minute until Welcome said he was out or order.LaPointe held up a package of bottled water and offered it to attendees at the meeting as Welcome tried to regain control of the meeting.“Leave Mr. LaPointe please, you are out of order!” Welcome said.That was when resident Richard Pozzo started to yell out from the audience at Welcome.“You are being disrespectful to the citizens of the Winsted!” Pozzo yelled.After order was restored, Glenn Zeh took his turn to comment.“Several years ago, public comments were attempted to be eliminated, and I stood up quite strongly to make sure they were preserved,” Zeh said. “But I also want people to remember that the definition of comment, according to any dictionary in the world, means remark, observation, fact or criticism. In my house, this does not take more than a sentence or two. Listening to some of the comments already, maybe the town should change its mission statement. It should read: The town of Winchester will be recognized statewide as a pass through in northwestern Connecticut. The town is a regressive and negative community with outstanding beauty of natural resources, a relatively safe environment, yet low quality of life.”Board of Education member James Roberts wore a “skunk” hat as he took his turn to speak.The “skunk” hat was in reference to comments made by Selectman Candy Perez, who said after the citizens comments period at the March 4 meeting that “...a long time ago, an old timer told me not to get in a pissing war with a skunk.” “You might think we should sit down, shut up and pay our taxes,” Roberts said. “We are not going to sit down. We are not going to shut up. You are rapidly pushing us to a place where we cannot and will not pay our taxes.”After Roberts finished speaking, some audience members applauded his comments, which led to Welcome reprimanding them.“Excuse me, but can we proceed with a little bit of decorum from the audience?” Welcome said. “This is a business meeting.”Welcome then proceeded to address audience members’ criticisms about the changes in public comment periods.“At our last meeting, 75 minutes was spent on public comment, and we heard the same things reiterated,” Welcome said. “The comments were made, as they have been at every meeting, by the same people. No one is restricting anyone’s rights in terms of comments that can be made. What we are doing is trying to have a business meeting here.”Welcome said more time was spent on public comment periods at the March 4 selectmen’s meeting than on selectmen’s business.“That’s more of a public hearing and not a business meeting,” she said. “I took it upon myself to go and research meeting agendas from all 169 towns and conduct an analysis on them. Thirty-nine towns had two public periods on their agendas while other towns had just one. Were there restrictions on those public comment periods? Absolutely. Some towns you are not even allowed to speak up. You can stop waving around the town charter. This board is governed by Roberts Rules of Order which does not say that there has to be public comment at a business meeting, period.”Welcome went on to say she changed the rules in order to restrict defamatory comments toward the board.“We’re not limiting public comment,” Welcome said. “You can talk about whatever is bothering you as long you are talking about a personal complaint and have objective comments about issues in town. I am trying to make this appear as a professional business and a town that is moving towards good and positive things. There are not too many people who talk about positive things about Winsted. We’ve become a town of pessimists.”Welcome spoke for five minutes, two minutes over the set public comment period.From the audience, LaPointe questioned how much time Welcome took to speak.“Excuse me, you are out of order!” Welcome said.She then requested Police Sgt. Kevin Kinahan to escort LaPointe out of the meeting, which Kinahan proceeded to do.In an interview after the meeting, Welcome said she requested Sgt. Kinahan’s presence at the meeting in order to keep order.She said Sgt. Kinahan was on duty at the time of the meeting.Selectman Ken Fracasso had the last word at the public comments portion of the meeting.“I would say that if there was proper information given by this board, we wouldn’t be going through this situation right now,” Fracasso said. “This financial crisis that we are in is something we have never seen before. It is because of the lack of information being provided to the public that is spearheading this drive and everyone at this table knows that. For some reason, we just refuse to give information to the public and it is being kept behind closed doors. If we had better information in a more timely fashion we would not be going through all of this rhetoric, week after week, meeting after meeting.”