Take five

At a special meeting on Monday, the Long Beach Board of Education continued its discussion of changing the time allotted for public comments on agenda items.

Currently, members of the public are allotted five minutes per item on the agenda at the start of the meeting and five minutes per issue at the end. Board President Lynn Gergen suggested limiting the amount of time to five minutes per person per meeting at the beginning and end of each meeting.

Board Trustee Pat Gallagher expressed his concern with limiting public comments. "There have been situations that we've gone through in my eight years on the school board that there have been reasons why people would have more time for more items," Gallagher said.

He noted that he was merely offering dialogue on the topic, and did not have any solutions. He did suggest the use of a clock that would be visible to the community so that a speaker would know how much time he or she has left to speak.

Gergen suggested limiting the amount of public comment time to a 45-minute block, but Gallagher reminded the board that some issues, like the fate of East School, require more time for discussion.

"So much of it is contextual," said Trustee Dr. Dennis Ryan when asked for his thoughts on the policy. "So much of it depends on the meeting and the issues presented at the meeting."

Ryan also raised the issue of conversations between a speaker and the board, questioning whether the time it takes for a trustee to respond should be deducted from the speaker's time. "When a person comes up, I think he or she must exhaust their time, exhaust their issues and that's it," he said.

Gergen agreed, saying that the board should wait until the speaker is finished before responding to his or her questions. She also said that by encouraging community members to e-mail questions prior to the meeting, trustees and administrators could prepare themselves with the information those members of the public are seeking and present it at the meeting when audience members address them.