The Cary Town Council plans to adopt a new decorum policy clarifying what speakers and audience members can and cannot do during town meetings.
For the most part, the policy—which is still only a draft and has not been adopted—takes preexisting rules and reminders about public comment from Cary’s website and meeting agendas and consolidates them into one document: Speakers should adhere to the time limit and cannot speak more than once per public hearing, for instance. Notable additions to the existing rules include a prohibition on audience “comments, questions, jeering, applause, or speaking” during public comment and a description of the enforcement actions the mayor can take if someone violates the policy.
At a work session on Thursday, the town council talked about the impetus for the policy: A July council meeting where dozens of audience members shouted at the council members and each other for hours over the former town manager’s resignation and a contentious affordable housing proposal. Anger seemed to spread contagiously through the crowd, which grew louder and ruder as the five-hour meeting progressed. Much of their vitriol was directed at the council for its perceived role in overlooking or enabling the former manager’s misconduct, and for what the audience seemed to agree was a too-fast timeline on the housing proposal—but they were also yelling at each other. The police officers who regularly stand at the doors of town hall chambers had to go into the audience and tell people to stop heckling the speakers at the podium. Several speakers blasted past the conclusion of their allotted time to continue haranguing the council and their opponents in the crowd. Mayor Harold Weinbrecht’s calls for order were mostly ignored…