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A "ridiculous trip down the rabbit hole"
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown Board of Education spent three hours debating whether to amend its bylaws to limit long board and committee meetings.
Board member Dario Hunter called the idea of limiting each board members’ speaking times during board meetings to three minutes – instead of 10 minutes twice per debate – another “ridiculous trip down the rabbit hole.”
The “arbitrary” limitation is meant to “shut people up,” he added.
Board member Ronald Shadd, however, reminded the board of more than eight hours and two days spent in January deciding on a board of education president – eventually re-electing his mother, Brenda Kimble.
Mike Murphy, board vice president, suggested limiting discussion time to two minutes based on talks with members from other boards.
He agreed with Shadd, calling the length of the reorganizational meeting to re-elect Kimble “ridiculous.”
“But where do the debates stop?” asked board member Jerome Williams. “Is it endless?”
Board member Jackie Adair said the importance of taking time to discuss each item at length is to hear everyone out.
“How else am I supposed to know where you sit or stand on an issue?” she said.
She called the resolution backed by Kimble to limit speaking times for meetings “undemocratic.”
“Whoever came up with this crap – that’s undemocratic,” Adair said. “Our founding fathers debated days, which is the basis of our constitution. ... You need to hear everybody’s opinion.”
Williams then suggested “cutting the baby in half” and meeting in the middle by lowering the 10-minute allotment, but not to three minutes.
Adair again voiced dissension with limiting committee meetings to one, one-hour meeting per month.
“These limits are driving me crazy,” she said. “Who cares? We’re not getting paid [for committee meetings]. So what? Where’s the harm? Where’s the foul?”
Members voted 4-3 with Adair, Hunter and Corinne Sanderson dissenting on a resolution limiting each member to:
Three minutes of speaking time, three times each, per debatable motions.
One, one-minute speech per motion.
Meetings also may not exceed two hours.
Board members may not participate in the public participation session.
As far as committees, some board members expressed distaste for The Vindicator’s coverage of the April 5 board-appointed finance committee meeting.
Kimble argued the public meeting should not have been reported on until a formal report was given to the board.
“Nothing should’ve been placed in the newspaper because it should’ve been brought back to the board,” she said. “There shouldn’t be comments in the newspaper from a committee meeting.”
A meeting notice was sent to The Vindicator, a Vindicator reporter attended as one of two members of the public present and reported the business of the meeting – openly taking notes and asking questions.
Murphy said his problem was with the lack of clarity on the board’s agreement of committee rules.
“I have no problem with a reporter reporting what they heard – they need to report what they heard,” he said. “I thought we said we weren’t going to meet until we officially passed all the rules for the committees.”
But Sanderson explained: “The reason why it was reported in The Vindicator prior to coming to the board was because public notice went out. Whenever public notice comes out, The Vindicator will be there. We’ve established The Vindicator reports on any public meetings that we’ve had. The meeting was conducted in the proper manner, all the rules were followed, and [the reporter] reported what she perceived as what she was hearing.”