But many of the “rights” granted to the people by the town’s public comment policy – revised most recently in December 2005 – are determined and divvied out at the discretion of the town’s sitting mayor. The policy – and the way Mayor Bill Thunberg interpreted it at the town board meeting earlier this month – was recently the topic of spirited debate among and between Report readers. (See the Comments section, “Resolution passes 4-2,” May 6.)
One commenter, DocW, posed a challenge to other posters: “There is not many meeting I miss, and strangely enough, the number of people talking in the public comments is low, as usually the crowd is, unless there’s one big topic, then they leave afterwards … come on out to a meeting, and speak up and be heard!! There’s plenty of room in the board room.
“Last I knew,” DocW continued, “it was your meeting and you have three minutes to voice your opinions.”
But Mooresville resident Rhett Dusenbury, who signed up to address commissioners immediately before the May 5 town board meeting, didn’t appear to leave the meeting with the same rosy impression.
Dusenbury was allowed to speak at the meeting – four hours after everyone else who had signed up to speak. All the other speakers were allowed to address the board during the meeting’s public comment period at 6 p.m. Thunberg told Dusenbury, however, that he would have to wait to speak until commissioners considered the agenda item about which Dusenbury had signed up to speak … which ended up being around 10 p.m.
On the surface, the argument could be made that Thunberg was being “considerate” of both the speaker and the board by allowing Dusenbury to speak just before a vote on the subject, ensuring the content of his remarks was still fresh on the commissioners’ minds.
On the other hand, the question is why Dusenbury wasn’t allowed to speak, along with the other members of the public, during the town’s prescribed time for public comments at 6 p.m.
N.C. General Statute 160A-81.1 requires the town to hold a public comment period at least once a month and allows the town to adopt “reasonable rules” to govern those periods. The law (below) does not provide a “reasonable rule” for governing comments based on subject matter.
The council shall provide at least one period for public comment per month at a regular meeting of the council. The council may adopt reasonable rules governing the conduct of the public comment period, including, but not limited to, rules (i) fixing the maximum time allotted to each speaker, (ii) providing for the designation of spokesmen for groups of persons supporting or opposing the same positions, (iii) providing for the selection of delegates from groups of persons supporting or opposing the same positions when the number of persons wishing to attend the hearing exceeds the capacity of the hall, and (iv) providing for the maintenance of order and decorum in the conduct of the hearing. The council is not required to provide a public comment period under this section if no regular meeting is held during the month. (2005‑170, s. 3.)
Dusenbury was adhering to what he believed was town policy when he provided on the public comment sign-up sheet his name, address and the subject about which he wished to address the board. That subject, Dusenbury said, was “limiting the mayor’s powers of office to protect the public.” More specifically, he wished to speak about the then-pending resolution to limit the mayor’s authority to sign documents on the town’s behalf – a measure that was passed by a 4-2 vote later that evening. (See “Resolution passes 4-2,” May 6.)
Dusenbury was sixth on the list of people who signed up to speak during the public comment period that evening, and he was the only one who listed the resolution as his subject matter. As Dusenbury approached the podium when it was his turn to speak, the mayor stopped him and said that since his comments were related to an item on the town board agenda, he would have to wait to speak until that item came up for town board discussion.
Dusenbury – who frequently attends town board meetings and has addressed the board in the past (oftentimes disapprovingly) – said he was “surprised” when the mayor did not allow him to speak during the public comment period. He said he’s always believed that the public comment segment of the board meeting was for just that – public comments – “and it was your three minutes to voice your comments, even if they are irrelevant to the agenda items.”
Thunberg’s actions left Dusenbury wondering if the reason the mayor moved him to 10 p.m. was so that fewer people would be present to listen to his remarks, especially considering the subject matter. Dusenbury estimated that 100 people were at the meeting during the public comment period at 6 p.m. while only about 10 were in attendance at 10 p.m. when the mayor finally allowed him to speak.
Though we may never know Thunberg’s true intent in removing Dusenbury from the public comment period, the situation raises serious concerns regarding the town’s public comment policy and the willingness of the mayor to use his “discretion” fairly and for all citizens – including those who are critical of the mayor himself.
One concern is that the mayor can apparently be selective in who he allows to speak during what part of the meeting, which could easily discourage citizens from exercising their right to be heard. Take Dusenbury, for example: He had other business to tend to the Monday night of the town board meeting. It so happened that on that particular evening he was able to leave and return in time to address the board when the agenda item for the resolution came up for discussion. But not every citizen can wait until 10 p.m. to address the board – and neither should they have to.
Town board meetings are held monthly for our elected officials to conduct our business. People who wish to address the board did not run for public office and should not be expected to sit through a four-hour meeting before being “allowed” to speak. Citizens have conveniently been conditioned by our government to think that we are “beneath” the government -- when, in fact, we are the sole source of the government’s power. We elect officials to office, and we hold the power to remove them. A government official making a citizen wait for four hours to be heard is as absurd as a company employee telling the CEO that she’ll have to wait until the end of a business meeting to speak.
Further, making a citizen wait to speak at any time other than the public comment period directly contradicts the very reason the Town of Mooresville established a public comment period in the first place. The purpose of the town’s public comment policy includes this statement: “The Board of Commissioners encourages and welcomes the input of citizens at its regular monthly meetings, and in order to balance the need and desire for such citizen input with the necessity of disposing of its regular Town business during such meetings, the Board is establishing the following policy to encourage open communications with its citizens pursuant to an organized, yet flexible, procedure.”
What if Dusenbury had not provided the subject about which he wished to address the board? Would the mayor have been able to make him wait four hours to speak? (For a complete look at the town’s public comment policy, click on the documents below:)
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Section No. 1 of the town’s policy states that citizens who wish to address the town board “regarding a town-related matter” are asked to contact the town clerk or manager by noon on the Monday preceding the town board meeting. Those who sign up to speak in advance “are requested to give their names, addresses and subject matter upon which they wish to speak,” the policy reads. “Failure to provide the information requested may result in delaying the public comment until the requested information is provided.”
Section No. 2 of the policy refers to citizens who, like Dusenbury, did not sign up in advance to speak at the meeting. “Regardless of whether a citizen has requested to speak prior to the regular meeting,” that section states, “ a sign-up sheet for speakers requesting to address the Board at its regular meeting will be placed at the front door of the Board meeting room prior to the said meeting.”
The sign-up sheet has a space for the speaker to list his/her name, address and subject matter – but it does not indicate that providing that information is optional. (Click on the document to see a larger version:)
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Asking speakers to provide their name and residency is a given – though, specific to residency, elected officials have been known to dismiss a speaker’s comments if s/he does not live within the city limits … even if that person is connected to town services. But what is the purpose in the asking for a speaker’s subject matter? Further, why would I, and citizens like me, suspect that one possible reason that the government asks for that information is to penalize and/or punish its possible detractors?
Those questions unfortunately catapulted me back to a dark, foreboding time in Mooresville’s history.
Rewind to 2002. Bill Thunberg – at the time a member of the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education – wrote a letter to the editor of the Mooresville Tribune, published Nov. 20, 2002, following the Tribune’s painful report of what had transpired at a town board meeting when our government denied a local resident the opportunity to speak.
In his letter, Thunberg stated that “the First Amendment right of free speech is not absolute.” (Read the complete letter by clicking on it below:)
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Beth Sherrill is the woman who was denied her right to speak by the 2002 town board. Although Sherrill does not live inside town limits, she is nevertheless connected to the town’s sewer system and pays double-rates for municipal sewer services. She had addressed the board at its September and October 2002 meetings about the double rates charged to her and other municipal water/sewer customers who live outside town limits and about specific conflicts of interest that certain town officials had. In the meantime, she had been asking questions of town staff about a $30,000 outstanding water bill owed to the town by developers of the sprawling Morrison Plantation development west of Mooresville.
When Sherrill asked Town Clerk Janet Pope to include her on the November 2002 town board agenda, Pope responded that the mayor (Al Jones), who was out of town, would first have to grant permission for Sherrill to speak. Pope also asked for the subject about which Sherrill wished to speak. Sherrill did not respond, assuming the elected leaders would know her subject matter since she had addressed them at the two prior board meetings.
In the days before the November meeting, Pope said that Sherrill would be denied the opportunity to speak to the board because she did not provide a subject matter and because the town board was "tired of hearing from her."
"We’ve heard her twice, and she doesn’t stick to the subject," Pope said. "It's a closed subject. It's a dead issue." ("Board says it’s tired of hearing from local resident," Mooresville Tribune, Nov. 1, 2002).
Sherrill attended the November meeting anyway. Shortly after it was called to order, she stood to note for the record that she wished to address the board but was being denied the right to do so. She also asked town board members to indicate by a show of hands if they had participated in denying her the right to speak.
Not a single elected official raised a hand or offered a response. But Sherrill did receive a response from two Mooresville police officers. “As she rose,” noted the Nov. 8 2002 Tribune editorial to which Thunberg was responding in his Nov. 20 letter to the editor, “two police officers in the meeting chamber began to slowly walk toward her, an implicit threat because the officers were armed with the ability to arrest.
“It was a display of the outright hostility toward the people that moves our local government,” read the editorial. “It was a moment that captured, sadly, an essential truth about government in Mooresville: Our leaders have alienated themselves from the people, the sole source of their authority.” (To read the entire editorial, click on the document below:)
Thunberg, who had several friends in local government at that time, was clearly angered by the content of the editorial, as evidenced by the letter to the editor that he authored in response to it. In his letter, not only did he attack the local press, but he made plain his feelings about the people’s First Amendment right to free speech, and he stated in no uncertain terms how he feels about Sherrill and other southern Iredell County residents who do not live inside town limits but who still help foot the municipal bills – at double the rate that Mooresville “citizens” pay for the services.
“Mrs. Sherrill is not a citizen of Mooresville,” stated Thunberg. “The town of Mooresville provides water treatment service to her property outside the city limits using the tax money paid by the citizens of Mooresville. She, as a consideration for the goodwill of the tax-paying citizens of Mooresville, should be required to pay more for that service.”
Our future mayor went on to liken the local media – specifically, the Mooresville Tribune – to Socialists and to suggest that we, the people, can “wad the paper up and throw it in the trash” or “wrap fish with it.”
“Just because it is well written and articulate doesn’t mean it’s the truth, or that we have to believe it, subscribe to it or advertise in it,” Thunberg wrote.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, those are the sentiments of our mayor – the same person to whom the town’s public comment policy grants the job of identifying speakers as “having the right to be heard” – the same person who has the sole discretion to “modify” that policy “from time to time, in order to accomplish the purpose” of the policy, which, as stated, is “open communication” – the same person to whom our policy grants the power to establish the order of speakers, and thereby pick and choose who is allowed to speak at 6 p.m. … and who will wait until 10 p.m. – the same person to whom our policy grants the authority to extend the established three-minute time limit for speakers as he, the mayor, “deems reasonably appropriate in order to foster and promote the opportunity for citizen speakers to have open and full access to address the board” – and the same person who has the discretion, per our policy, to determine “the total time available for citizen speakers … based upon the anticipated length of the meeting …”
Is it any wonder that some citizens would be suspicious about this particular mayor having sole discretion over the town’s public comment policy – a policy that was born from the federal lawsuit that Beth Sherrill herself filed against the town after it denied her the opportunity to be heard?
Sherrill summed it up best in her own letter to the Tribune’s editor, published on Sept. 5, 2003 – 10 months after Thunberg’s letter was published and two months before he sought re-election to the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education.
Responding to Thunberg’s 2002 letter, Sherrill stated: “Mr. Thunberg felt so strongly that I should not have been allowed to speak that in a single sitting, he managed to use the terms ‘Socialist agenda,’ ‘club rhetorical,’ ‘adolescent,’ ‘mundane,’ ‘demeaning,’ ‘self-righteous,’ ‘bias against our society,’ (and) ‘antiglobalist’. Mr. Thunberg’s letter insinuated that the Tribune and/or its writers were anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, dishonorable, unfair, inaccurate, untruthful and that they ‘don’t like Mooresville’ and allow ‘no room for God.’
“All of this harsh terminology, presumably because the local newspaper had dared to stand up for the First Amendment of a Constitution which we expect Mr. Thunberg to uphold as a school board member and role model for our children,” Sherrill continued. “Mr. Thunberg appears more interested in abusing his leadership roles than in serving those he is supposed to be serving.” (Read Sherrill’s entire letter by clicking on the document below:)
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Incidentally, Thunberg was not re-elected to the school board that year.
But two years and many thousands of campaign dollars from developers later – and after dropping many hundreds of dollars in the “Fish Wrap’s” coffers for large, colorful campaign ads, then somehow securing the newspaper’s endorsement – Thunberg won his first bid as Mooresville’s mayor. In 2007, with significantly less campaign money but, ironically, yet another Tribune endorsement under his belt, Thunberg won another term as mayor … but by far fewer votes than in 2005 and against a political newcomer. Thunberg’s current term expires in November 2009.
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