(1/29) Starting with the next Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Commission Public Workshop, only those formally invited by the Commission, or approved by the town staff will be able to give testimony to the Commission during the ‘workshop portion’ of the Workshop. The public will be allowed to provide comment at the conclusion the workshop.

The change to the rules was approved at the January 26 meeting following concerns raised by P&Z Chairman, Randy Cubbedge, over the need to keep Workshop’s focused on providing input to the commission necessary for them to make informed decision.

Vice Chair, Bryant Despeaux, noted that the incident that brought about the need to modify the Workshop procedures was an incident at the December meeting where an individual spoke – and the commission had no idea who he was or why he was there.

In agreeing to the change to meeting rules, Board members made it clear that it was not their intention to limit public input, but to ensure that those who gave testimony during the ‘workshop’ portion of the Workshop were in fact qualified individuals.

The new rule will allow input from town staff, experts, legal, representatives of other town’s P&Z board members or the County P&Z - speaking as an official for that entity, as well as the applicant or a representative of the applicant.

Several members of the commission expressed concern that by limiting participants to invitees only went against the idea of soliciting input from residents of the town.

However, Jim Humerick, the Town Manager, said that a Workshop was different from a normal P&Z Commission Meeting where the pubic will always have the opportunity to participate. "A workshop," according to Humerick, "is to address a specific topic. The commission needs to be careful about allowing anyone to speak, or the workshop will quickly go off topic and that will ruin the effectiveness of the workshop."

Cubbedge echoed Humerick’s logic, saying: "the purpose of a workshop was for the commission and the town staff to work on a specific issue or topic and to get input from experts to help guide them in their deliberations. By vetting people who want to talk in a workshop through the town staff, you make sure that the people who will talk will be qualified and able to talk on the given subject. For example, we may have someone approach us and say they are an engineer. But when you ask ‘what type of engineer are you,’ and they answer ‘electrical,’ you can tell them that’s nice, but the subject of this meeting is sewer…"

It was suggested that in future Workshops, the town staff or Planner should introduce whoever would be speaking and lay out their qualification to speak, not only for the commission members, but for the members of the public present.

Depending upon the subject of the Workshop, the P&Z Chairman will have the option to open the floor at the end of the Workshop for pubic comment, or withhold public comment.

Thurmont P&Z is not the only P&Z Commission dealing with the need to keep input focused. Wlakersville’s P&Z Commission recently changed it rules to require anyone testifying to make an oath prior to any testimony to prevent ‘people from spouting off on subjects they are not qualified to speak about.’