School board meetings down at CCSD allow for public comment. After all, the Board is an elected one, elected by their peers to represent them in matters involving the Valley's children. Now it appears the Board wants to stifle some of the more "inflammatory" speech.In a move that's designed to certainly irk some of the Valley's parents and advocates of public education, school board members have asked CCSD staff to craft a scheme to "cut off" speakers during various Board meeting comment periods.
Las Vegas Sun:
Board members have asked staff to come up with a warning to potential public speakers that personal attacks won’t be tolerated.
For first-term member Linda Young, who has been the recent target of a few of her West Las Vegas constituents, “it’s becoming badgering and harassment. We want to hear what you have to say. You have good ideas and recommendations ... at the same time, none of us up here relishes being smacked around.”
The current regulation says “members of the public are free to express themselves as they see fit, and are personally responsible for their comments.”
In a draft proposal, which the School Board has asked be refined, the warning reads: “Public comment, the content of which is irrelevant, beyond the authority of the board, willfully disruptive of the meeting, repetitious, slanderous, offensive, inflammatory, irrational, amounts to personal attacks or interferes with the rights of other speakers, is prohibited.”
The language came from a 2002 opinion by the Nevada attorney general about public meeting conduct.
May I remind this Board that they are elected by the citizens. They are elected officials. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
And considering the issues I've been reading, and hearing, and learning about since I've been in town, may I also remind this Board that they can be voted out. Sorry, but when it comes to our children, I don't play.
E.C. :)
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Article on time to speak at the board. At least one of the reasons why this web site exists is that in 2007 the old board decided that i had not cared to hear so much public input. Obviously they realized that cutting maximum time down to five minutes eliminates much of what can be proven. tough to prove anything in 5 minutes. Near imposable to make a sufficient statement in 2 or 3. So the "Off topic" items give the public 2 minutes now.
The fight to keep Trustee email secret continues at taxpayer expense. If you sit through enough Board meetings you begin thinking that either the board members are omniscient or there is some way that they are getting an understanding outside the public view. Of course they would be able to meet/talk privately within the limits of the open meetings law but it feels like they have come to some agreements when they vote. The only way you can come to wonderment about this is to have been to the prior board meetings and know that there was no prior agreement meeting. If you were just at the one meeting then you could think that maybe it was discussed at a prior meeting. But it was not. So when did the agreement come? Surely they were smart enough not to use the emails? http://www.lvrj.com/news/52636352.html
Interestingly I wrote the paragraph above in about early September 2009. During the last week of September an article was published http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/sep/28/rule-works-try-keep-comments-meetings-civil/ regarding the lack of civility during the Board meetings. I think that the article is balanced except that it ignores one fundamental issue. That issue is that the Board meetings are set up so that if the Trustees don't want to hear what you have to say then you don't get enough time to make a coherent explanation. However, if they do want to hear it then the chair frequently allows you to prattle on forever. Being allowed to speak at length does not mean that they agree with you. They will let you babble on if you are obviously an idiot too. But if you get up to the mike and start presenting hard evidence of wrong doing then you are cut short before you finish.... Just my opinion. Perhaps there would be more decorum if the Trustees actually voted with the audience occasionally. But the Trustees vote as a block following through on the back room deals of the bureaucracy almost 100% of the time. So after a few dozen meetings the audience gets pretty fed up with being ignored. I do think that some of the new Trustees don't recall the record on public speaking on the issues that they are voting against and so don't understand why the audience is so frustrated. The audience can tell that the bureaucracy is not telling the truth or telling the "Truth and a half." followed by the board voting on that misinformation.
K
TalkToCCSD.com
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