PUBLIC INPUT AT COUNTY COMMISSION MEETINGS REMAINS UNCHANGED FOR 99 PERCENT OF ITEMS

MONROE COUNTY, FL – A recent news article discussed changes to the Monroe County Board of County Commissioner’s “sounding board” process that may have confused some residents about the public input process for all items on of the agenda. While the Board did adjust the rules for the rarely-invoked “sounding board” portion of the agenda, the public input rules for most items considered by the Board each month remain unchanged.

The sounding board is the process where a resident can initiate the placement of his or her own item on the agenda for the meeting to discuss items pertaining to County government. 

In the last year, 12 of the 1,291 items on the Board’s agenda were sounding board items. For the remaining 1,279 items, speakers are afforded three minutes to speak and five minutes if the speaker is the first representative of an organization. Those time limits were adopted decades ago and remain unchanged.  

Last month, the Board revised the rules to move sounding board items to the end of the agenda, limited the frequency a speaker could place the same sounding board topic item on the agenda to once every six months, and reduced the 10-minutes previously allotted to the initial speaker to five minutes with each additional speaker receiving three minutes. These time limits are consistent with the rules for other agenda items.

At the upcoming monthly meeting taking place on Wednesday, Sept. 18, the Board will reconsider whether sounding board items should be heard at the end of the agenda or be scheduled for a specific time during the meeting. 

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