People who want to make public comments at North Perry Village Council meetings now have an official set of rules to follow. Related Articles Local News | Lake County EMA-led drills at Perry Nuclear Power Plant assessed Local News | Former ABB Inc. site soon to be redeveloped in Wickliffe Local News | Successful Lake Catholic holiday craft fair will mean new marching band uniforms Local News | Lake County Genealogical Society to hear from Scott Norrick, of Ancestral Past Local News | Willoughby Hills residents express concerns over proposed Dollar General Those regulations were incorporated into an amended ordinance approved by council at its Nov. 7 meeting. The new requirements for audience members to speak at council meetings are part of a larger revision to a section of the village’s codified ordinances. Council voted unanimously to expand an existing rule in a village ordinance regarding the sequence of events that take place at council meetings. This mandate is formally known as Rule 5 — Order of Business. In its revised form, the rule still lists the specific order of events and activities at council meetings, but also inserts new and detailed and information on how the public can participate during these gatherings. Perhaps the most controversial issue addressed in the amended rule approved by council was a mandate that limited public comments at North Perry Village Council meetings to three minutes per person. The regulation, which has appeared on every meeting agenda through Nov. 7,  states that the public must address comments and questions to the mayor and will be limited to three minutes. The mayor will decide whether he, a member of council or village staff will respond. However, that time limit somehow had never been added to Rule 5 — Order of Business. Besides questions about the mandate being unofficial, some audience also complained that the three-minute rule was unfair to people who required more time to ask questions or fully address problems and issues in North Perry. Other people said village government should only place a three-minute cap on individual public comments if a meeting attracted 20, 30 or more people. However, the newly revised regulations for public participation at council meetings did not tie the maximum length of comments to the number of people who are in the audience on a given night. Instead, each statement made by a participant “shall be limited to three minutes duration unless extended by the mayor,” according to the amended version of Rule 5. “This gives the mayor discretion to extend the time period for an individual’s public comment,” Village Solicitor James O’Leary said. “But again, the idea is, if you don’t have some kind of limit on it, you could end up with a filibuster. And that’s what you want to prevent.” A filibuster is a long speech that someone makes in order to delay or prevent a new law being made. Before council voted on amending Rule 5, Mayor Brian Titus said he would abide by whatever decision council made for the time limit on public comments. “My job is to run the meetings, and I go with whatever (council) puts in front of me,” Titus said. The mayor said he wanted to be fair and consistent when it came to enforcing time limits on public comments. “If we’re going to give everybody 10 minutes, then I’ll do 10 minutes,” he said. “I need a structured guideline of what to do. I don’t want to be the bad guy.” The new version of Rule 5 also states that the portion of council meetings devoted to public comments “shall be limited to 30 minutes, unless extended by the mayor.”