Council looks at efficiency

Recent Chapel Hill Town Council meetings have kept officials and attendees up past their bedtimes — but officials hope a regulation on public petitions could improve time management.

Council members have discussed regulating public petitions at their meetings to promote efficiency, and town staff are reviewing their recommendations.

At the start of each council meeting, residents can present and comment on petitions regarding town issues, whether they are on the agenda.

Recent issues, including the Nov. 13 police raid of the former Yates Motor Company building and the relocation of the Chapel Hill Public Library, have brought many petitioners to council meetings.

“It turns into a couple hours of hearing people speak about a single petition,” said council member Jim Ward.

Some meetings have even lasted more than five hours.

Council members’ suggestions include limiting the number of petitioners allowed to speak on behalf of each topic and enforcing a rule that limits speeches to three minutes.

“The three-minute limit is not rigorously enforced, and people often take more than that,” Ward said.

Council member Matt Czajkowski said speeches should be limited when a petition is submitted because the council rarely votes on the petition that same night.

“If you look at what the purpose is at the time a petition is submitted, it’s literally to submit it,” he said. “It’s not to make lengthy arguments in favor of it.”

He said most issues come back up for discussion at later meetings.

“The whole point is that they will come back,” he said. “They’ll be on the agenda, and there will be effectively unlimited time to discuss them.”

Ward said while reducing the number of petitioners could increase efficiency, he doesn’t think they should be eliminated completely.

“It’s very important that we continue to have petitions at every business meeting and that they occur first thing,” he said.

Will Raymond, a Chapel Hill resident who has run for council and has been involved with council petitions for more than a decade, said he thinks time management problems shouldn’t be fixed at the cost of public debate.

“The meetings go very long sometimes, but it’s better to err on the side of getting it all out there,” he said.

Raymond said he is concerned that some council members could be limiting the petitions because they don’t like to hear negative comments on Chapel Hill.

“They ran for office, and part of their job is to listen to the citizens even when the citizens are telling them something they don’t want to hear,” he said.

Ward said at earliest, the change could go into effect within the month, but it will likely occur later.

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