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Wasatch County to formalize public comment policy

The Wasatch County administration building in Heber City.
Rob Winder
/
KPCW
The Wasatch County administration building in Heber City.

The Wasatch County Council is set to adopt more specific rules for public comments at its meeting Wednesday, Jan. 22.

County manager Dustin Grabau said revising the policy for how and when locals can weigh in on county issues is an attempt to prevent problems before they happen.

“Last year, Midway City had an incident where they were Zoom-bombed, and because of the nature of that, it’s always better to be proactive and have a policy in place that clearly outlines the criteria we use,” he said.

He’s referring to an incident last February, when several people on Zoom at a Midway City Council meeting hurled profanities at the mayor and made racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LDS comments. Later, Midway leaders determined the commenters weren’t Midway residents.

Wasatch County started the process of creating a comment policy last spring. At Wednesday’s meeting, the council could formally adopt the rules.

Grabau said the draft policy aims to minimize disruption to public meetings.

“Having signs that obscure the view of others would be something that would be prohibited under this policy,” he said. “We also have a definition of things like relevant topics.”

The rules would also limit comments to two minutes unless the council decides otherwise.

Councilmembers have used two-minute time limits in the past, like at public hearings about the Heber Valley temple plans. But they’ve said the intent of the time limit is to be able to hear from as many people as possible, not to prevent residents from making their voices heard.

Grabau said the draft policy would also dedicate 15 minutes at the start of every meeting to public comment.

“I think the idea is that if there was a hot-button issue that wasn’t on the agenda, that [there] were many people that wanted to discuss, the chair could say, hey, we wanted to devote an additional 15 minutes,” he said. “Maybe we want to do 30 or 45 or whatever it is.”

He emphasized the council only sets time limits for items not slated for a vote. For action items, public comment runs as long as residents have feedback to share.

Wednesday’s county council meeting begins at 4 p.m. For the agenda and a link to attend online, visit the county website.