Commissioners asked to allow public comments

During the March 7 Hot Springs County Commissioners board meeting, Paul Galovich had requested time to discuss pubic comments at commissioner’s meetings.

Current procedure at commissioner’s meetings is to allow public comments, with proper recognition by the chair, on agenda items. Public comments on non agenda issues is typically not allowed.

Chairman Tom Ryan started the discussion by saying, “Commissioner Galovich asked to have a public comment discussion be added on. I think it’s a great discussion item. I have some concerns of just having public comments in the sense that the way I view the commissioner meeting is, it is to do the county’s business. So there are all kinds of worthy things out there that you would like to bring light. But I myself, and, I think everybody will have some discussion here, myself I feel there are only certain things that the commissioners control.”

Chairman Ryan added, “As being the chairman one thing is I do not like to bring items to this agenda if the commissioners do not have purview over it. So, there are a lot of really good things going on, there might be bad things going on, but should they bring them and we just allow public comment even when we don’t have any say in it. So when we listen to something, but we don’t have any thing to act on it, I don’t think that that should be allowed. We don’t bring agenda items that are…”

Commissioner Paul Galovich said, “Like a town council issue of chickens in town.” 

An extensive conversation was held between the three commissioners regarding their views on public comments on non agenda items. Chairman Ryan mentioned that all three commissioners are accessible by individuals wishing to discuss particular issues that may need to be agenda items. Ryan and commissioners Phil Scheel shared a concern for people bringing public comments on issues that the commissioners do not have purview over.

Chairman Ryan said, “All three of the commissioners here are accessible. If somebody has a concern for us. They can reach out to one of us and you can say, ‘Yeah, that’s a great issue. I’ll get it on agenda to talk about it.’ But if you don’t have that heads up, then our staff doesn’t have the time to prepare pros and cons that every single issue has… everybody sees things a little differently. Your opinion my opinion and the right opinion.” 

Chairman Ryan continued and said, “And if you don’t give your staff time to develop things, you could make a decision and not have all the correct pieces. You get done and Road & Bridge says, ‘You should of called us, we’ve weighed in on that topic a lot.’ I am not in favor of having just a public… I don’t want to say ‘bitchfest’… but a public comment period just because I feel like this is a meeting the time is valuable. Our time is valuable. I don’t want to bring the things here that we don’t have a say in. The problem is somebody gets up and you’re not prepared for what they have to say and they say something accurate or not accurate and it gets reported in the paper because that’s what they said. Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s accurate. But maybe if you had time to prepare and they had the opportunity to come and talk as well, I just think you would have a better product.” 

Commissioner Galovich replied, “You know, I don’t disagree with you, chairman. I just think like today, for example, today is a day full of business and me as a new member, it’s very difficult because I’m not used to all the grants and all the equations for the grants, the contribution that we pay and all those things. So it’s an educational process for me every time I get a packet, I mean, four hours trying to understand what I need to understand for coming to a meeting. And so, like the first meeting of the month, I can understand it’s all business.”

Chairman Ryan said, “You can call me if you have questions at any point.”

Commissioner Galovich said, “But I try to do my own due diligence and try to research that and try to understand it, so I can understand the business nature of what we do. And there’s no question about that, we have that business. I’m thinking more of the area, maybe an allocated time on the second Tuesday of the month, where maybe it’s not necessarily about pertaining to a particular issue, maybe it is just a general overall concern, and we not have to even have to make a decision about public comment. But just to hear what some of his concerns may be. You can take notes or learn from that and maybe could help to give us a direction to move towards or to encourage a subject to put it on the agenda for a formal discussion. That’s kind of more of what I was thinking.” 

Commissioner Galovich continued and said, “We have public meetings. We want to encourage public participation, and I don’t want to necessarily feel like the citizens are stymied from being able to voice their opinion. I think decisions that come before us and that are taken like today, for example, if you had a comment on everything we tried to go over, it’s going to be pretty impossible for somebody to understand. It’s difficult for me to understand in depth after studying that for hours, so it is going to be difficult for somebody to understand the depth of all that we’re doing. So I can understand the fact that not necessarily inviting a bunch of public comments on those things, but to have a portion of our schedule, like I’m thinking, the second Tuesday. Where somebody just can not necessarily stand up and vent, but maybe they have suggestions that come before this as county commissioners that would help us in our thoughts and our plans and our operations of upcoming funds, that would be advantageous. There are always benefits in my mind that come from public participation.” 

Chairman Ryan replied, “I don’t disagree. The county is a little different than other government entities in that the people that sat here today and talked to us is the extent in the county that we oversee. All those people here, are people that do report directly to us. But the county has a unique deal in that the main things the county does, the clerk, the treasurer, the assessor, the attorney, all of those, the coroner, as well as the district clerk, all of those people they are, in that mix, their accountability. It’s not like the police chief who works for the council. So the community, the way they give accountability to those people is, that every four years they either elect them or they don’t. And so if you have a really big problem with one of those departments, you should take it up with them because they have the same authority that we do. It’s not in our place to listen to gripes about the assessor, the treasurer or the clerk.”

Commissioner Galovich said, “No, I understand.”

Chairman Ryan said, “I just don’t see how you can control that by just having an open public comment.”

Commissioner Galovich said, “Well, one of my thoughts is to kind of limit it to three minutes or something, so it’s not a public comment-dominated conversation. What I’m thinking is more like, what pertains to a person individually. Like, I’ve gone through here recently the land use plans from 2002 to 2022, just to review the changes. It’s complicated, I mean, it’s deeply complicated. Going through all this to compare the changes but actually, there is some verbiage in the 2022 plan, that if you went and dug in a propane line on your property it requires a land use change to disturb the surface of the ground. So let’s say that somebody is wanting to do something like that project or they’ve got a complaint that they’ve got in relationship to their land use of their private property, but they don’t have any place to voice that, which really is in our control.”

Chairman Ryan said, “It is, but the first thing you do is go to talk to the planner because he’s super voiced indeed.”

Commissioner Scheel shared his thoughts and said, “Mr. Chairman, my idea of having a public comment period in the public meeting is we’re providing the stage for all kinds of things, good, bad or otherwise. If we genuinely are listening to people that have a problem with the nexus of something that we have control, power, or authority over, it provides a good thing, or it could provide a bad thing. We talk about personnel issues that need to be handled in executive session. There’s other things that are specifically permitted only in executive session. We don’t want somebody coming up and complaining, talking about potential litigation, because that’s one of those things that’s required to happen in an executive session.” 

Commissioner Scheel continued and said, “There’s such a wide birth of the things that the county commissioners deal with, providing a stage for someone to grandstand about something. If we can build some kind of framework or rules, sure, we have a public meeting for the first 15 minutes of every Tuesday, second meeting, but here are the things that are off limits that would become, I think, horribly unwieldy and people would be felt pressed down if we said, ‘Well, that’s against the rules, you can’t talk about that in a public meeting.’ So I would suggest that we don’t go with and I’m not in favor of having just open public comments.”

Commissioner Scheel added, “I think that the commissioners are extremely accessible. I visit with probably ten people between meetings that call me, come to my shop and ask me personally about things that the commissioners deal with. My phone number is available on the county website, it’s available on other websites, and my email address is. It’s not a secret. We have county emails. We’re all pretty public figures. People can find me if they’ve got questions. I am more than happy to talk with them individually outside of a public meeting they can bring up their concerns to me. And just like Tom said, if it’s been something that I think is super important. I’ll talk with the rest of you guys and we’ll see if it is something that we should bring up on agenda. I think people should be encouraged to be part of the public process by visiting with us elected officials. We’re the county commissioners and we’re just elected like others. If they don’t like what we’re doing, they have an opportunity to elect us or not. Just because we’re county commissioners, doesn’t mean we are one of the highest offices of the county, we manage a few things in the county.” 

Chairman Ryan then addressed a concerned citizen in attendance at the meeting and and asked him if he had a comment.

He responded, “I do. My name is Hubert McAlister. There are several things. First of all, I have to ask every one of you individuals that are sitting here, who do you work for?

Chairman Ryan replied. “We work for Hot Springs County.”

McAlister asked, “That’s the taxpayers, correct?”

Chairman Ryan replied, “It is.”

McAlister, “Okay. To shut us out is improper.” 

There was crosstalk and Chairman Ryan said, “I’m not…”

McAlister continued and said, “You are shutting us out because you don’t want it to in a public forum. There’s things that we talk about that are talked about here that need to be discussed in a public forum setting. We’re asking for 10 minutes, that’s all. If you have somebody just grandstanding, just tell them it’s not germane to the topic. You have recourse, Robert’s Rules of Orders are there for a reason. It’s just like when you go into executive session for a real estate purpose, that’s taxpayer dollars, we need to be made aware that you’re going into executive order to purchase property. I think that should be something that goes before the public, not in an executive session.”

Hw added, “Personnel issues, absolutely, those are between you and an employee. But when you’re purchasing property or you’re doing something large enough, you don’t just put it in public notices. This should be in a public forum in the newspaper saying, hey, we’re going to spend money up here on the old airport. It shouldn’t be in public notices, let’s hide it here. That’s why I come to these meetings because I felt deceived by you individuals.” 

Chairman Ryan said, “Did you not…We had a public hearing on that…”

McAlister said, “And guess where it was? I didn’t see that in the paper.”

Chairman Ryan said, “It was advertised.” 

McAlister said, “In the public notices.”

Chairman Ryan said, “Okay.” 

McAlister continued and said, “Even Jackie Dorothy said that herself in a public meeting over at the town hall. She said, ‘Oh yeah, well we put it in public notices.’”

Chairman Ryan said, “Which is where you’re supposed to do that.”

McAlister said, “Something that significant should come before the taxpayers in something other than public notices. It should be in the paper and say this should be on the record. You’d get a lot more people here who would be interested in what you’re doing. As far as accessibility, I don’t feel comfortable talking one on one with Phil. I don’t feel comfortable talking one on one with you [ Chairman Ryan].”

Chairman Ryan said, “Okay.”

McAlister said, “So that’s why I’m here in a public forum and that’s what I’m discussing. We’re asking for 10 minutes, 10 minutes. If it’s not germane to the topic, then shut it down. I’m not trying to incite a problem here, I’m just trying to discuss with you why I think we need to have a public forum with the taxpayers, the people that are footing the bills for everything that’s going on in this county. We need to have the taxpayers to be able to speak, ten minutes, that’s all, that’s all we’re asking for. Thank you.”

County Attorney Jill Logan said, “Mr. Chairman, I’m happy to brief this for you. One thing I would say initially is that you’re not required, as far as I can see, to do that, to allow that. We’re not mandated to have a public comment section. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have one either if you choose to do so. One thing that the public might not understand, too, is that if it’s just kind of an open public comment, it’s not an action item. I’ll brief that in a little more detail and try to explain it a little better. You wouldn’t be able to take any action on anything that’s brought forward in that setting, which is why we have an agenda, which is why we’re fairly liberal on what we allow on the agenda so that it is actionable. If you would like, I can brief it for you and shoot you all an email and revisit it or whatever you would like.”

Chairman Ryan said, “Please do that.”

County Attorney Jill Logan added information about what other counties do. “I checked, quickly. I didn’t get much time for them to respond to me but some counties do, some counties don’t. And I just barely kind of got into why… so if there is anything that you want to share with me that I’m not hearing today, that would be helpful too.” 

Commissioner Galovich said, “My thoughts are, the whole foundation, granted we’re not founding the government here, but the foundation of our government was based on debate. Our founding forefathers didn’t always agree on things, they had large disagreements. And so the public format of being able to have discussion actually is an educational process. in my mind anyway. I think it would be educational for us, it could be educational for those who are there. So if someone stands up and has a comment about something, we can at least share with them our knowledge and experience and sometimes those discussions are best held in a public format, rather just individual conversation with me or you.”

Chairman Ryan replied, “I don’t disagree and that’s what we’re doing here.”

Commission Galovich said, “I appreciate that, too. Thanks.”

Commissioner Scheel said, “It’s up to the chairman’s discretion to acknowledge people that have questions. Today during Nate Messenger’s report about what’s going on at the airport, if someone had a question about Nate’s report and the chair recognizes them in our regular meeting because Nate’s report is on the agenda, then I think it would be completely appropriate if the chairman recognizes them they could ask a question. We’re not excluding all the things that are on the printed agenda or people asking questions, ‘Hey, what does TAP mean in the TAP grant?’ That is completely appropriate in my mind, questions about things that are on the agenda if people have questions about them.”

The discussion about public comments on non agenda items ended with Chairman Ryan saying, “I agree. We’ll have some more discussion about it.”