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Residents press board over change to public-comment yielding; board amends agenda to remove item 8d from public comment
Summary
Public commenters urged the town to preserve residents’ ability to yield speaking time, arguing the proposed rule change (listed on the consent agenda) would curtail participation; the board voted to remove item 8d from the public-comment portion of the agenda and adopted the amended agenda.
Huntersville — A string of public speakers at the Dec. 16 Town Board meeting urged commissioners not to limit residents’ ability to yield public‑comment time to a designated spokesperson, saying such a change would reduce meaningful citizen participation.
Josh Dumas told the board the proposed change — to be implemented via the consent agenda, he said — would silence regular participants who rely on yielded time to present fuller, joined comments. "This isn’t your meeting. It’s our meeting," Dumas said in a direct appeal to the board.
After public comment, a commissioner moved to remove item 8d from the public‑comment portion of the agenda and explained the intent was to allow more board discussion on the subject. "The reason for the removal is because I think that there needs to be more discussion on 8d," a commissioner said on the record. The motion to remove item 8d passed, and the board then adopted the amended agenda and later adopted the consent agenda items.
The sequence illustrated both resident concern about procedural changes and the board’s willingness to pause and address the issue through discussion rather than finalizing it via consent items.
