The public can address members of a committee examining the proposal by Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration to move three Confederate monuments from North Carolina’s old Capitol grounds to a Civil War battlefield at a meeting this afternoon.
Committee members met earlier this month and established guidelines for a public meeting scheduled for Wednesday in the auditorium of the North Carolina State Archives in downtown Raleigh. The meeting will last up to three hours, with each speaker getting one minute.
The main concern from the panel setting the ground rules seemed to be making sure that the committee heard speakers from both sides of the issue.
“Let’s say one group lined up and they got the whole speaking side,” one member said on Monday’s teleconference. “The chairman could midway through say, ‘we’ve only heard from one side of this debate, we’d like to hear from some people on the other side.’
“And that would be up to the chairman to make that decision.”
Another committee member reiterated the desire for a “balanced” discussion.
“This thing should not turn into a partisan issue one way or the other,” he said. “We need to have a nice, balanced viewpoint from many people.”
In addition to the time limitation, speakers will also be limited to speaking about the monuments at the center of the proposal, not other monuments across the state, including Silent Sam on the UNC – Chapel Hill campus.
The five-member panel plans to report on the proposal next month to the full state Historical Commission, which makes the decision on Cooper’s proposal to move the monuments to the Bentonville battlefield site in Johnston County.
Citizens can also file written comments through an online portal. More than 3,700 messages already have been received.
Wednesday’s public hearing is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. and could last until 4:30.
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