Council back to the drawing board on separation of Public Comments from meetings, live broadcast

As part of an overhaul of its meeting scheduling and procedures, the Front Royal Town Council was poised to approve the separation of the “Public Correspondence” or “comments” portion of meetings, along with not live broadcasting those comments as part of planned changes. But after Gary Gillespie’s initial motion to approve a change to the “Order of Business” for regular council meetings a rift appeared.

Two newly elected councilmen, first Scott Lloyd and then Joseph McFadden expressed opposition to the “Public Comments” aspect of the changes. Those changes would include moving the public input on matters of concern to 6:30 p.m., a half-hour prior to the start of the meeting. It appeared the earlier, opening segment devoted to public comments was repeatedly referred to as a “work session” that would be adjourned to allow the one monthly regular meeting to begin.

Above, Joseph McFadden, and below Scott Lloyd, expressed discontent with a planned change in how public input on non-agenda items was to be altered time-wise to a half-hour prior to the 7 p.m. meeting starts and eliminating live broadcasts of those comments. Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini

McFadden wondered what council was to do for a half-hour if, like Monday night, no one showed up to speak. Would council have to kill a half-hour before starting the scheduled 7 p.m. meeting?

Would public comments be cut off at 7 p.m. if there were a larger number of people present to address council? McFadden indicated he was going to be a “no” vote on the motion as presented.

Lloyd offered an amended motion that would include continuing the live broadcast of public comments. The conversation evolved into multi-faceted directions that led Councilman Meza to suggest returning the matter to work session for all the legal and procedural variables addressed to be reconsidered in some detail prior to a vote. And after Gillespie and Lloyd agreed to withdraw their respective motions, it was back to what will now be council’s lone monthly work session, which along with the change to one monthly meeting (from the previous two of each that has long been council’s monthly format), was approved on a second reading just prior to the “Order of Business” matter being brought forward.

Also, as of that above-referenced second reading council will no longer have the necessity of two votes of approval for the ordinance and other major business action items.

See this discussion and other business in this Town video.