By the way, CLIPGATE and MedfordPornRing were tied @ #1; Clipgate just pulled way ahead...
TOP 5
TOP 5
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Hi Joe,
Ouch! My head is spinning trying to follow all the convolutions of
this issue. Hopefully you can clear something up for me.
Very often the Council votes for "suspension of the rules to take a
paper out of order" when there is a very large crowd waiting to speak
on a topic. They probably do this so they can be done with it and get
the crowd cleared out to allow them to conduct the rest of the meeting
without so many prying eyes in the chamber to object to their
proceedings. I seem to remember one time back when Bob Maiocco was
the Council President (which was many, many times) you were speaking
and another council member tried to shut you down for exceeding your
time limit. You countered back that since the rules were suspended,
there were no time limit constraints. You asked for a decision from Mr
Maiocco and he agreed with you. He said that when a suspension of the
rules is called for and accepted, that ALL the rules were suspended -
you could indeed speak for as long as you wanted to.
So when the aggregate energy initiative was being discussed, was
this also under suspension of the rules? If not, then I'm sure most,
if not all, of the City Council spoke more than 3 times on the issue
and spoke for well more than 15 minutes each in total. Can you even
remember a time when the council members did NOT violate these two
"rules" during a hotly contested issue? It seems to be only when
you yourself are on the agenda to speak that the City Council remains
mute. Last time you spoke on the agenda Breanna Lungo-Kearn couldn't
even get anyone to second her motion.
So either they were out of line by violating their own meeting rules
(if it wasn't under suspension) or they were out of line by trying to
shut others down while they droned on and on under suspension of the
rules. I think you've got them in a Catch 22 situation, Joe. You win
again!