Editor
The Goshen Township Trustees may be changing the way the public comment period at their regular meetings works after months of hearing frustration from citizens.
The trustees held a special meeting on September 23 to discuss potential changes to the community forum process.
After the meeting, Trustee Lisa Allen said that they will be looking into a new policy.
“The feedback tonight was really, really good I felt like. Everybody was very respectful. We had one person that was more passionate than others but everybody had a great exchange of information and questions,” Allen said.
Meeting attendee Roy Wells came to his first trustee meeting a couple weeks ago and was very concerned about the lack of civility and transparency, and aggressive behavior he saw, he told the trustees.
Scott Kube, meeting attendee, told trustees that the issue may not be the community forum policies, but rather the respect the community has for the trustees and vice versa.
Wells feels that in meetings, issues should be addressed in a polite manner, agenda items should not be removed at the last minute and citizens should be able to speak about an agenda item before it is voted on.
“You guys should not be able to vote on things before at least hearing from these folks behind me,” Wells said.
Dave Maphet, meeting attendee, echoed this sentiment, and added that it takes bravery for some to get up and speak at a public meeting.
“People need to be heard,” Maphet said.
Allen said that she is open to more discussion about whether it is best to have public comment at the beginning or the end of the meeting.
Viktoria McCully, meeting attendee, told trustees she was disappointed that the open forum that night was not truly an open forum, as the agenda had discussion topics listed on it.
Allen responded and told McCullen that the topics were just ideas to get a conversation going, they were not meant to be restrictive.
James Constable, meeting attendee, reminded the trustees that they are in America where there is freedom of speech. He feels they have not followed the rules for public participation at meetings that were adopted on May 12.
The policy passed in May states that no member of the public can speak at a trustee meeting about a topic not within the trustee’s authority and not on that meeting’s agenda.
If a member of the public starts to speak about an item not on the agenda, the trustees can stop the speaker, according to the policy.
The previous policy, which was passed in 2013, allowed the public to speak about anything under the trustees’ authority, Allen said, but the policy was changed when the Clermont County Prosecutor’s Office had some concerns about it.
Trustee Lois Pappas Swift said she wants to do whatever makes the citizens of Goshen happy, after which she was applauded by meeting attendees.
“We want you to come here, say what you got to say; I don’t have any problem with that,” Swift said.
Allen said she has no issue with not limiting the topics to items on the agenda, but she would like to limit topics to issues under the trustees’ jurisdiction.
Allen’s intention is to expand the resolution on public participation that was passed in May to make the meetings more open, she said.
Tom Bixler, meeting attendee, requested the trustees or Goshen Administrator Lou Ethridge create an email distribution list for items like the trustee meeting agenda.
Bixler also asked that the trustees seek comments from other members of the community because the people who spoke at the meeting are not the voice of the community, he said.
Wells requested the agenda be on the website in advance of the meeting.
Others spoke about the website, as well, which citizens have been waiting on to be up and running again for months.
“To not be able to get a website of township administration, trustees, whatever, up and running for several months; you don’t even want to know my comment on that one,” McCully said.
Ethridge said in an email he knew the website needed attention when he started his position in January. He began addressing the site in May, but found it more difficult than expected.
Ethridge contacted a website designer in June, who had not even started work before the entire township computer system crashed on June 16. A volunteer doing maintenance on the system said the crash was caused by a serious problem, Ethridge said.
On June 25, Ethridge brought in an information technology contractor. He worked for the next two months to stabilize and restore the system. During that time, no work was done on the website, Ethridge said.
In mid-August, the focus was turned back to building a new website, which Ethridge hopes will be up the first week in October.
“Creating a complex, interactive information resource from the ground up in two months has, to say the least, been a real challenge,” Ethridge said.
The trustees will speak about the community forum process again at the next regular trustee meeting on October 13, which will start at 6 p.m. instead of 7 p.m.