For the second time in a year, the Yelm City Council has said that they don’t want to hear from the public their opinion on the most pressing issues affecting the city. I’m not really sure about Wal-Mart in Yelm, but for Pete’s sake, not wanting to hear from your constituents? Wow:

“It’s the council’s meeting. They can decide what they want to hear and what they’re tired of hearing,” the attorney said. “It’s maybe not good political practice to hush people.”

Rivas said it’s optional to even have a public comment period. Yelm’s council meetings include 15 minutes for public comment.

“You can understand if you’re barraged for two months at meetings — the same people saying the same thing,” Dille said. “The other issue is talking about Wal-Mart now that the application has been submitted.”

Blocking discussion of Wal-Mart in general is a way to keep the council members from appearing prejudiced against the store, since an appeal of the project could come before the council, Dille said.

“They should not be speaking at all about it,” Dille said.

From a “I’m getting really bored at this meeting” point of view, I can understand the city council’s feelings on this. When I was a reporter, I used to get bored out of my mind at the same three guys that used to show up to this one city’s council meeting. Always talking about the same stuff, YAAAAAAAAAWWN. Just wait for it to get over.

While its easy to overlook the crazies, its a bad thing not to notice that these guys are doing what we should all be doing. We should all, from time to time, get up in front of our city, county, whatever and give them a piece of our mind. And, if it just happens to be about something that they have heard a lot about, well tough cookies, you’re going to listen to me.

This is why I have a soft place in my heart for the city of Olympia, that apparently takes this so seriously, we have regular town hall meetings, which are essentially very long public comment periods. Yeah Olympia!