LETTER: Grafton board has taken bad turn by limiting citizen input

To Ozaukee Press:

I attended the Grafton Village Board meeting on Sept. 16 and was a bit taken aback at the way the meeting is now run and the vitriol that was displayed by the village president toward a citizen wishing to contribute to one of the meeting agenda items.

As a veteran of attending many Village Board meetings over several years under the previous administration, I was surprised at how citizen input is now limited and controlled. In the past, anyone wishing to speak on a non-agenda item was allowed to address the board at the start of the meeting, with a loose three-minute time limit. Now the limit is two minutes with an intimidating count-down clock prominently displayed on the wall.

Also in the past, if a citizen had some input to an agenda item, they were allowed (and encouraged) to speak following discussion of the topic by the board.  Now, the citizen’s input (or correction to statements made) is not allowed after such discussion, and therefore the board no longer is able to develop direction on topics that includes the desires or knowledge of citizens before they take action, but rather solely on the views of the board members in a seemingly dictatorial fashion.

These revised meeting rules tend to make the meetings feel like a tyrannical dictatorship, rather than a friendly small town local government function. I have requested that the board recognize the undemocratic nature of these revised meeting rules and that the president return to the previous rules that openly received citizen input during the meeting.

Bill Hass

Grafton