The Colorado Independent: Anyone who has sat through more than a few local government meetings knows that elected officials hear some crazy talk during their open comment periods.

Most county commissions and city councils set aside time in their regular meetings as a sort of open-mike session during which members of public typically announce events, laud scout troops for earning their public service badges, or otherwise speak their minds. In nearly three decades as a political reporter, I’ve seen these sessions become forums for UFO watchers to report alien sightings, a woman to berate a city staffer for allegedly sleeping with her husband, and a man who’d show up to lob weekly F-bombs at county commissioners for putting fluoride in the water supply.

You might have thought that Larimer County commissioners were trying to avoid that kind of free-for-all last week when they set rules at a public meeting prohibiting speakers from uttering specific words. But the two words they banned aren’t exactly in the crazy-talk lexicon. In fact, they happen to be essential to discussing one of the biggest land-use controversies in the northern Colorado county this year: A pipeline the city of Thornton wants to build that would draw water from the Poudre River – to which that growing city has long-held rights – and move it southward.

Hundreds of Larimer County residents are spun up about the path the pipeline might take and how it could affect their properties. They’ve gathered 369 signatures on a petition to stop the project from being built in a residential area along Douglas Road. Environmentalists, for their part, want the city of Thornton to keep its Poudre water flowing farther downstream before diverting it into a pipeline.

My interest in the Oct. 17th meeting has nothing to do with the merits of the pipeline project. Rather, I’m struck by the way the commission handled the public comment period at which about two dozen members of the public had signed up to speak.

Visit The Colorado Independent for more.