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Recently, Ridgefield residents and the Board of Selectmen have discussed the possibility of including more time during meetings for public comment.
Possible solutions have ranged the spectrum, the more conservative of which would allow time only for members of the board to address private concerns at the end of the meeting. The more liberal solution would open the floor to any and all public comment in an "open-mic" fashioned part of the meeting.
As it now stands, the Board is set to discuss a compromise that would allow for a more open government without letting meetings devolve or slip into the midnight hours.
Jan Rifkinson, who is getting ready to run for a spot on the Board of Selectmen in November on an unaffiliated ticket, first brought up the idea with a request for "Old Business" and "New Business" items on each meeting's agenda to allow for meetings to address issues off the set agenda.
"I understand there's an agenda," Rifkinson said. "But people do come with ideas. Right now there's very little audience participation."
For Rifkinson, the more open the better.
"My point of view is that you encourage people to step up with ideas who may not come otherwise," Rifkinson said. "You allow people to say, 'Sometime down the road, I'd like you to look at X, Y and Z.'"
Both times the subject has come up, the Board has generally agreed with the sentiment, but when it came to logistics, there were some apparent drawbacks, one of which addressed the primary reason for having an agenda in the first place.
"When we have items on the agenda, such as a blight ordinance, for instance, a specific group of people show up," First Selectmen Rudy Maroni said. "People get upset when we talk about things not on the agenda -- that's the reason we have one."
Selectwoman Barbara Manners said that residents are welcome to call Marconi's office beforehand to secure a spot on the agenda, and they are often included.
"We make it clear that people can call the office and put something on the agenda," Manners said. "And I've never known Rudy to turn it down."
The Board of Education currently allows time before meetings for public comment, which draws a large crowd at times. Having been a member of the school board, Selectwoman Maureen Kozlark chimed in on that experience.
"I liked having it on the agenda," Kozlark said. "We don't necessarily want to make it a free-for-all for the public, but we want people to have the opportunity to speak their minds."
Selectman Andrew Bodner suggested opening it up to the members of the board for a "Board of Selectmen's Report," borrowing from the "First Selectman's Report" item currently on the agenda.
"We wouldn't want someone to use it as a pulpit for issues not relevant to the Board of Selectmen," Bodner said, addressing the "open mic" solution.
Currently, Bodner said, the board is "pretty gracious" in allowing people to speak.
"I don't think there's been any meetings that no one's been able to speak," Bodner said.
Rifkinson wants the process to be formalized, though.
The subject is still up for discussion, and the board was open to the compromise of permitting a short time at the beginning of each meeting for comment but without allowing a free-for-all kind of atmosphere.
"The bottom line is to have another conduit for people to comment," Rifkinson said. "Anything we can do to encourage a dialogue should be looked at in a positive way."
