Portsmouth task force opts for community outreach over in-meeting public comment

The Portsmouth Climate Gun Violence Prevention Task Force agreed at its May work session to avoid open public comment at regular task-force meetings and instead prioritize community outreach through civic-league meetings, neighborhood listening sessions and the city’s social-media channels. Chair Jalen Dre said committee chairs should send written updates on committee work by May 23 so the task force can compile a report for City Council ahead of the June 9 joint meeting.

The decision followed extensive discussion about how best to collect feedback without allowing task-force meetings to run long. Councilman Hugo, the City Council liaison, urged the group to use the committees for substantive work and to treat the full task-force meetings as oversight, saying, “the hope is that this meeting is a oversight of the work that’s being done in the committees, but the real work of this group is gonna happen at the committee level.”

Members emphasized going into neighborhoods rather than hosting open-floor public comment at the work session. “I just don’t feel like we’re ready to bring people into our station,” said Leticia Sessum, arguing the task force should start by attending established civic-league meetings and other local forums. Several members suggested asking civic-league presidents to place the task force on existing agendas, using those meetings to gather targeted feedback and then reporting highlights back at the task-force meeting.

Task-force members also discussed digital outreach. Dre noted the city already posts daily on Instagram and Facebook and encouraged the community engagement committee to prepare uniform posts for the city’s official channels. The marketing director and police social-media contacts — Peter Glagola and Chantel (Portsmouth Police Department contact) — were identified as points of contact for publishing task-force content.

As a practical step, members agreed to map civic-league meeting schedules and begin outreach; they also asked the community engagement committee to propose a schedule of monthly neighborhood meetings and any materials for the city to publish. There was no formal vote recorded on the outreach plan; members described the decision as consensus to prioritize community-based listening and to reserve in-room public comment for later, if and when the task force decides it is ready.