From now on, citizens who wish to speak to the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners about a topic on their regular meeting agenda may sign up and do so during the general public comments time early in the meeting.

That opportunity will now occur before the “consent agenda,” “old business” and “new business” portions of the meeting, so members of the public may have some input on topics before commissioners vote.

At that same point in the meeting, individuals who sign up may also talk about issues of concern that aren’t on the agenda at all, subject to the same five-minute limit per person. By a majority vote at any meeting, commissioners could waive this time limit or otherwise alter the order of business.

County Attorney Jeff Akins presented these and a few other changes as an amendment to the part of the Bulloch County Code of Ordinances (Sections 2-26, 2-27 and 2-28) that sets out the rules for commissioners’ meetings. His draft of the amendment had been posted online and provided to the commissioners last week, and they enacted it by a unanimous vote during Tuesday’s 8:30 a.m. regular meeting.

Commissioner Nick Newkirk, newly elected last year, had started the process toward this change as soon as he joined the board in early January. This final amendment has other things in it and the single public comments time wasn’t quite what he first suggested, but it satisfies his concern, he said afterward during a break in the meeting.

“It does. It gets the people involved if they want to be,” Newkirk said. “Now they have the opportunity to discuss any of the actual agenda items, which they previously haven’t. They’ll get the opportunity to discuss it that night (or morning), before the commissioners have a chance to vote on it. So I think it was a good move, and I appreciate the rest of the commissioners seeing that.”

Moved up from end

For the past couple of years, the only public comments time during regular meetings – other than for things that require separate hearings, such as zoning changes and road closures – had occurred near the end of each meeting. In fact, the old order of business outlined in ordinance Section 2-27 had set that as the appropriate time, unless a majority of members voted to call for public comments on a particular item.

Some of the longer-serving commissioners resisted Newkirk’s first suggestion in early January of adding a public comments time just for agenda items before at least the “new business” but keeping the generic public comments time near the end of the meeting. That would have been similar to the procedure used by Statesboro City Council, whose agendas provide separate times for comments on agenda items and non-agenda items.

Conner’s compromise

But what has now been adopted as the county’s new practice, having a single public comments time for both purposes early in the meeting, was suggested during the Jan. 27 meeting by Commissioner Toby Conner. His suggestion drew supportive comments from other commissioners, so Akins was tasked to draft the amendment and proposed making other changes.

He presented both a “red-line version” with added passages in red type and old passages being removed or replaced and struck through in blue, as well as a “clean version,” with the whole ordinance as now adopted all in black type.

Some of the changes that Akins submitted, and which are now part of the ordinance, reflect legal technicalities.

For example, he added “and as otherwise provided by law,” as a “catch-all phrase” to a section specifying that meetings will be held in compliance with OCGA 50-14-1 and subsequent passages, also known as the Georgia Open Meetings Act. That “catch-all” reflects the fact that legal code sections sometimes change, although Akins doubts that one will, he said.

Another reference in the old ordinance was simply an error, citing a county code section that doesn’t exist, so he changed it to the one that was apparently intended.

Instead of “a copy of the agenda” being made available to the public within two business days after a meeting, the ordinance will now require “a summary of the subjects acted on” within two business days, as also in state law. (Agendas are made publicly available before the meetings, and the clerk of the board already creates a summary of the actions afterward.)

Also, the amended and updated ordinance now places “commission and staff comments” near the end of the regular-meeting order of business, where “public comments” used to be. In practice, a time for comments from commissioners and staff has been a part of the agendas for years, but the county law previously didn’t call for one.

Public sign-up

“All members of the public who wish to address the board” during public comments time, now early in each meeting, “must sign up prior to the start of the meeting on sign-in sheets provided for that purpose,” the new “public comments” section states.

In fact, that was already when people were signing up to speak. However, the old wording of the ordinance actually called for those who wanted to address the board “to submit their name and the topic of their comments to the county manager at least three business days before the board meeting.” That long-ignored or forgotten requirement has now been struck through and removed.

Newkirk made the motion for the new amendment, and Commissioner Anthony Simmons – who had previously expressed objections that an added public comments time could lengthen meetings – seconded it before the 6-0 vote.