It’s not exactly open mic night, but the Peachtree City Council may soon allow the public to air brief comments during a city council meeting on any topic they choose.

Speakers would be limited to two minutes each under guidelines proposed by city staff, with a total limit of 20 minutes for all comments about off-agenda items.

The proposal will be discussed by Council at its regular meeting Thursday night.

The current ordinance allows persons up to three minutes to address council on a matter that is on the agenda, and that will not change under the proposed ordinance, said City Administrative Director Jane Miller.

If the staff proposal is approved, 20 minutes would be set aside at each meeting to hear comments from the public about any item not on the meeting agenda.

The two-minute limit and the 20-minute time frame will be “strictly enforced,” according to the proposed guidelines.

Speakers will also have to pre-register with city staff starting a half-hour before the meeting begins, and when they are called to speak, they must state their name and address.

The current ordinance does not require council to hear any public comments about items not on the agenda. Rather, council has “discretion” to allow the comments or not.

A three-minute time limit for a person’s public comment on agenda items has been in existence on the books for some time now, but it has not been enforced, Miller noted.

The plan is for the new public comment item to appear at the beginning of the council agenda, Miller said.

Under the guidelines proposed by staff, any public comments about items not on the agenda would be included in the official meeting minutes. Also, speakers would be called to speak in the order in which they registered, and the 20-minute time limit would be “strictly enforced.”

Council will be able to interrupt and stop any speaker who uses obscenity or profanity, according to the guidelines proposed by city staff.

The concept was formed at the City Council retreat last month at the request of Mayor Harold Logsdon. The consensus at that time was for city staff to prepare guidelines for the public comment session.

The proposed ordinance would eliminate a current provision that allows anyone who is publicly disparaged by a city employee, appointed official or contractor to have up to three minutes to respond to those remarks. Miller said staff is recommending deleting that section because it hasn’t been used.

“It just doesn’t look like we’ve really needed it,” Miller said.

Also, the mayor has the power to recognize anyone to speak as necessary, Miller agreed.

That language was added in response to a “one-time situation” that has never come up again, Miller said.

That one-time situation involved former Mayor Steve Brown, who was a citizen back in March 2000 when he was denied the right to speak at a council meeting after then-city attorney Rick Lindsey announced that his law firm was suing Brown and The Citizen newspaper for libel.

The lawsuit, which was later dropped, centered on letters to the editor Brown authored which questioned Webb’s position on the board of directors of a local bank while he defended the city against a lawsuit filed by one of his fellow bank organizers and directors.

At that meeting, then-mayor Bob Lenox denied Brown the opportunity to speak, and then-councilman Dan Tennant asked for a vote on the matter. Brown’s request to speak was denied 3-1.