Patti Littlefield sits at her desk in the Tupper Lake Town Hall, where she works as supervisor, in October 2017. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

TUPPER LAKE — When the town board convenes on the second Thursday of every month this year, there will be new rules for public comment periods at the start and end of each meeting.

Town Supervisor Patti Littlefield announced the rules Monday at the last town board meeting of the decade. She said she has not liked how members of the public have addressed their grievances to the board in recent months, and she called the current state of the board meetings “sad.”

Littlefield there will no longer be interruptions during the regular business of the board and that comments during the public comment period will be kept to a strict three-minute limit.

There were many contentious Tupper Lake town board meetings in 2019, including several with sidewalk advocates John Klimm and Barbara Close, town board candidate Daniel “Boonie” Carmichael and village board Trustee Ron LaScala.

“I’m sorry that we have to get to this point, but that’s where it’s going to be,” Littlefield said. “For God’s sakes, you can’t sit here, throw papers at the supervisor and call names to people, and expect us to be respective of you. It’s just insane.”

“But we will be,” Councilman Mike Dechene said.

“But we’ll be respectful, and we’ll be courteous, and we’ll have the rules posted on the wall in January,” Littlefield said.

Littlefield said the new rules are meant to make the meetings more focused and productive, and less argumentative.

“No offense, Dan,” Littlefield said, speaking to Tupper Lake Free Press owner Dan McClelland. “but people say to me, ‘I am sick of reading those articles in the paper of how rude people are at the board meeting.'”

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The rules

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The three-minute time limit already exists but has rarely been enforced, until recently. Dechene will have a three-minute timer, and Littlefield will have the gavel used by her father, former Tupper Lake village Mayor John Sparks.

“It’s about time John Sparks got back at the table in Tupper Lake,” Littlefield said.

Dechene said he remembers that the school board’s public comment period, when he was on that board, was five minutes.

“To listen to somebody completely antagonize and criticize for five minutes is a long time,” Dechene said.

Littlefield said speakers cannot give their unused time to someone else.

Dechene asked if the supervisor will have discretion to let a speaker go over their time limit.

“Yes,” Littlefield said. “But I won’t.”