A decision by the Locust Grove City Council last week drew considerable criticism in a few circles, but city officials maintain that the negativity is undeserved and inaccurate.

  The council voted at its January 7 regular meeting on a resolution establishing a new policy for public comment during meetings. A maximum 10-minute general comment time was set, with individual speakers limited to three minutes each.

  The move generated a backlash from a few local residents, some of whom spoke out at the meeting in person and others who commented on social media. One post on the Moving Henry Forward page on Facebook identified Locust Grove as “now one of the most restrictive local governments in metro Atlanta regarding public comment.”

  That statement is simply not true, according to city manager Tim Young. The guidelines set forth in the resolution are what the city has been following for quite some time but had never codified.

  “Before this, the council could have stopped speakers after one minute, or any time they wanted,” he said.

  Two key points overlooked in the public criticism, according to Young:

  Nearly every zoning issue – including all rezoning, variance and conditional use requests – requires its own public hearing. That means each side of the issue gets 30 minutes of comment time.

  The new resolution stipulates that the council can extend public comment time in various cases by a majority vote.

  “We’ve normally not had many comments at meetings except for presentations by the chamber or other groups,” said Young. “We looked at other jurisdictions when we were putting this together. Some have said we are the most restrictive in the region, and we are not. This just establishes a baseline for public comment guidelines.”

  The council follows Robert’s Rules of Order when conducting meetings, and that document does not address the issue of public comment, Young said. That necessitated this action, which also includes some parameters for decorum that had never been codified, such as inappropriate comments and speakers returning to the dais multiple times.

  In addition to zoning matters, public hearings are required during the budget adoption process and for appeals of administrative decisions. Certain matters such as business license issuances sometimes lead to separate public hearings; those are decided on a case-by-case basis.   The main thing Young emphasized was that the city is not re-inventing the wheel here. “We are following established guidelines.”