Westerly RI Resident Bob Chiaradio Opposes Changes To Article 4 Bylaws Limiting Constituent Time During School Committee Open Forum

Westerly, RI resident Bob Chiaradio voices his dissenting opinion to proposed changes for Article 4 of the School Committee bylaws.

In the time since September, 2020, the amount of time that speakers are allotted during the first open forum has been steadily reduced from ten minutes to five minutes and the topics for discussion has also been curtailed to agenda items only.
If a speaker did not use all of their time, it was once acceptable to yield the balance of the time to another speaker. This is no longer allowed.

Mr. Chiaradio notes that open forum was once ten minutes and allowed another five minutes after all speakers have had their say at the podium. The current change went to five minutes with additional five minutes for a total of ten minutes. Now, the proposed changes are five minutes first time with additional three minutes thus reducing the amount of time at the podium for any speaker.

It appears that the point to the reducing time at the podium is to limit contrary or dissenting views to the activities of the Westerly School Committee.