Our elected officials have been elected by the people to conduct the city's business and should be given the necessary opportunity to do so in an atmosphere that is reasonably non-threatening and orderly.

Auburn city attorney John Rossi is absolutely correct in his recent efforts to do that. We can't have people jumping up, screaming obscenities and disrupting the proceedings.

Rossi understands this kind of behavior is unacceptable and he's trying to protect the professional environment in council chambers. But the Auburn City Council must be careful not to get carried away in limiting the people's right to participate in city government. It's still a government by the people and for the people. Don't mess with that.

We used to be able to speak at the beginning and end of every weekly city council meeting. That's eight chances a month. Then the council decided that we should only be allowed to speak at the start of the meetings. Just like that we went from eight to four. Then they decided that two of the city council meetings each month would be called “working sessions” and we wouldn't be allowed to speak at those at all. So we went from four to two.

Now they want to restrict what we can talk about during our last two chances per month.

At first they didn't want us to talk about the same thing more than once every 90 days, but that idea was dropped. Now they want us to sign a statement before speaking that we'll obey the rules; which are that we won't talk about ongoing court matters and won't launch any personal attacks.

Does that mean we can't talk about issues that may have caused the litigation in the first place? And what exactly is the definition of a personal attack? Certainly all personal remarks shouldn't be considered as personal attacks. We should be able to name names and tell individual city officials and managers that we disagree with them. If any city official finds public constructive criticism is just too much to take, then they should step aside and let somebody with a thicker hide take over.

Going back to the founding of our nation, there has been a long-standing tradition that at the local level, citizens should have the opportunity to publicly address government officials. The town hall meeting is as much a part of America as old glory itself. It would have been unthinkable to tell a citizen that they couldn't mention someone by name because that constitutes a personal attack. That's wrong and we all know it.

So we're down to two chances a month to tell city hall what we think. Enough is enough. The citizens of Auburn deserve a chance to be heard.

Judy Ducayne's column appears Tuesdays in The Citizen, and she can be contacted at sacredheart6005@hotmail.com