Vote on Town Board meeting rules expected Tuesday, with changes to initial proposal

The Riverhead Town Board is expected to adopt new meeting rules Tuesday to ban signs and reduce the time speakers have to comment on resolutions and town matters, but retain the ability for residents to comment through Zoom. 

Attendees would be able to speak about resolutions and any topic related to Riverhead Town for three minutes, rather than the current five minutes, according to the rules proposal, which is scheduled for a vote at tomorrow’s Town Board meeting. The rules would continue to allow people to speak during those portions of the meeting through Zoom or another teleconferencing app  — a benefit the board had considered removing.

“I spoke to each of the board members about it and we agreed that we will allow public comments on Zoom on the resolutions, just like they have been going on,” Supervisor Tim Hubbard said during Thursday’s work session. “The only difference being is they’re limited to three minutes instead of five minutes.”

The proposed rules would also ban “signs, signboards, posters, banners and the like,” and distributing flyers in the meeting room, because they can “distract, disrupt and/or obstruct viewing of the meeting,” according to the rules proposal.

The decision to change the proposal came after some residents wrote letters and spoke to the Town Board against an earlier rules change draft discussed during the Jan. 30 work session. Town officials gave several reasons for reevaluating the rules of procedure, including giving every speaker a chance to speak during crowded meetings and to bringing the rules in line with those of other towns. The rules were last changed in 2019.

Board members said the changes were not meant to quash criticism, although the rules amendment originally gave the chair of the meeting — which is usually the supervisor — the power to remove speakers if their comments were “unnecessarily repetitive” to their own or prior speakers’ comments, or if a speaker engaged in “partisan political commentary.” References to political commentary have been removed from the rules entirely in the recent draft, and the supervisor may now ask a speaker to leave a public hearing if their comments are repetitive only to their own comments, not to another speaker’s.

PRIOR COVERAGE: Riverhead Town Board considers limiting public comments, banning signs at meetings

Town Attorney Erik Howard said during the work session Thursday that he incorporated board members’ feedback into the latest revision and changed some of the language in several areas to “supplement” the board’s intentions, specifically prohibiting the use of “racial, ethnic and/or sexual slurs” during meetings. 

Most of the changes discussed at the Jan. 30 work session remain in the rules proposal, including the chairperson’s ability to remove people deemed out of order using the police — something Hubbard did during the 2025 budget hearing in November to Aquebogue resident Ron Hariri. Hariri used inflammatory language and spoke on a subject that Hubbard believed was off-topic before he was removed; Hariri has filed a notice of claim against the town over the incident, indicating his intent to sue. The rules proposal was revised from an earlier version to specify that speakers deemed out of order by the supervisor will be given a warning before police are called upon to remove someone.

Howard also included language in the new draft to give the supervisor the power to impose a time limit on comments during a public hearing if the meeting is heavily attended. There currently is no time limit to speak at public hearings, which are required for major board actions like adopting or amending local laws and the town’s budget.

“So we’re going to presumably allow everyone to speak and then if the meeting hasn’t gone on as long, or if people want to come back up a second time, that would be left to the chair’s discretion,” Howard said. “but it would be uniformly enforced with respect to each individual public hearing.”

Board members were satisfied with the latest draft of the rules. “We listened to what the people had to say, and, you know, we made the rule changes we wanted to make, but we also didn’t just shut everybody out with the opportunity to comment,” Hubbard said. “We just cut it down a little bit time wise, but everything’s still basically going to be the same.”