If you have something to say to the Henry County Board of Commissioners at one of its regular meetings, don’t leave. Make sure you’re there for the entire meeting.

  The board has a public comment policy, but it can be changed from meeting to meeting. And the commissioners don’t have to give you a reason why.

  Robert Kolpak found this out the hard way the morning of Oct. 1. The Stockbridge resident has addressed the board often of late, at nearly every meeting the past few months. He arrived for this meeting about 30 minutes before its scheduled start, he said, and signed up with the county clerk as is required.

  “I told her I had a doctor’s appointment and would be back around 9:30,” he said.

  Ordinarily this would not be a problem, as the board has consistently put the public comment portion of the meeting almost at the end of the agenda, after all regular county business is conducted and only before the commissioners’ own comments and announcements. As this meeting lasted two hours, Kolpak’s brief absence should have gone unnoticed.

  But Vivian Thomas, who counts Kolpak as one of her District IV constituents, made an unusual motion at the start of the meeting. During the consideration of the agenda, when a couple of items are usually added or removed, she moved to change the public comment period to the beginning of the meeting and limit each speaker to three minutes instead of the usual five.

  Thomas offered no reason or public necessity for the change, and none of the commissioners commented. The revised agenda was approved 5-1, with Johnny Wilson voting against.

  Kolpak found out about the change when he returned to the meeting and learned his opportunity to speak had come and gone. He said he has little doubt as to why Thomas took this action, since she knew he was at the meeting and had signed up to speak.

  Citizens who speak during public comment time are not engaging in a dialogue. The commissioners sit quietly while they voice their concerns and them move on to the next speaker or agenda item.

  But Kolpak has made a series of efforts to have a dialogue with Thomas, which he feels is appropriate since he lives in her district. He said she has refused so far to do so. He said he has documentation of numerous emails in which he has requested a meeting with her, and all of them have been rejected or ignored.

  Over the past year Kolpak had communicated with county staff as well as Bruce Holmes, the commissioner for the district that includes Hidden Valley Park. He said he owns some property adjacent to the park, and some county-owned buildings next door to his had fallen into a dilapidated state. He still has not gotten satisfactory answers to those issues. When Cochran Park was closed a few months ago for safety reasons, Kolpak addressed the commissioners several times about problems at Hidden Valley Park that were not being addressed.

  As for Thomas, he tried to speak with her because of his concerns about recent rezoning decisions that are expected to bring several hundred new residential units to the Millers Mill Road area. He has records of email communications with county staff in which he made repeated requests to speak with her, but she has not responded.

  The Times reached out Friday to Thomas through her official county email for a comment, but received no response by press time.