'Protocol for City Council meetings and Public Hearings'

This was posted on the wall in the Pine Island City Hall council chambers last night. True text, no editing:

Protocol for City Council meetings and Public Hearings

We appreciate your attending our public meetings and respectfully request you conduct yourself in a civil and productive manner.

Examples; when contributing please state your name, rise or come to the microphone, to state your opinion or business

When speaking please refrain from any personal attacks or name calling, this applies to the public, the council, or any staff or department heads.

While someone else has the floor please show respect and avoid any sidebar conversations, and positive or negative reactions to the speaker's point of view, we value all input and such activity might discourage someone else from speaking.

This Council is here to conduct the cities business, and therefore ask for your cooperation to make our meetings/hearings run smoothly and efficiently.

Repeated warnings or failure to comply with these requests can be means to ask you to leave. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

I'll assume council members expected more fireworks than they got Tuesday. During the public comment period, which comes (in my humble opinion) ridiculously late in the meeting, only a few people tested the limits of this policy, and not really on the issue that you might have expected, the city administrator issue.

There were a few "positive or negative reactions to the speaker's point of view," a few people who applauded "free enterprise" or "no government regulation" comments, which went unadmonished.

But on the whole, it was a tight and orderly meeting.

Not sure if this is true, but one observer noted that the "protocol" flier, which was printed on yellow paper, matches the color scheme of last fall's campaign material for "change" candidates Novak and Diskerud.