Anyone who wishes to offer a public comment at a future Bangor City Council meeting might have to wait a while to speak.
Bangor city councilors last month changed the city’s public comment policy to shorten the amount of time people are given to speak at the beginning of each meeting to 15 minutes. Anyone who remains after that time limit is over must wait until the end of the meeting.
Previously, everyone was allowed to speak near the beginning of the meeting.
The change was made “to allow the council to conduct its business and out of courtesy for those attending the meeting for a specific agenda item,” the city said in a statement.
Public comment is the portion of City Council meetings when people — both those attending in person and watching remotely — can voice their opinions or concerns related to city business that doesn’t appear on the meeting agenda.
Everyone gets up to three minutes to speak and those who live or work in Bangor are asked to speak before those who do not. Each speaker is allowed to offer comments only once and statements that are obscene, threatening or target city staff will be interrupted.
If there are still people who wish to speak after those 15 minutes are up, the council can reopen the public comment period at the end of the meeting for up to 45 minutes, the revised policy states.
The City Council chairperson, who is now Cara Pelletier, can also alter these time limitations, according to the policy.
David Warren, Bangor city hall spokesperson, did not return requests for comment on the policy change on Thursday.
Though the change can be inconvenient for attendees who may have to wait until the end of a meeting to speak, it doesn’t necessarily violate Maine law, according to Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
While Maine law states that the public has a right to attend and record public proceedings, such as city council meetings, it does not give the public the right to participate in meetings.
If a public body gives residents the opportunity to speak, however, Silverman said everyone must be treated equally, regardless of their stance on an issue. For example, if the council is weighing a contentious ordinance, those in favor of the proposed rule can’t be allowed to speak before or for longer than those against it.
While Silverman said Bangor’s new policy doesn’t “raise red flags,” that doesn’t mean that there isn’t opportunity for the policy to be misused in the future.
“I’m not saying what they’re doing is unreasonable, but I wonder if there are better ways to move forward that would allow everyone to be treated equally in terms of when in the meeting they could speak,” Silverman said.
Instead of breaking public comment into two parts, Silverman wondered whether there’s any way the council could allow everyone to speak either at the beginning or the end of the meeting, especially if the council anticipates many people will come to speak at a certain meeting.
“By splitting them up, there’s more likelihood that the policy will be abused,” Silverman said. “There seems to be some other, more reasonable ways to deal with the situation.”