I am writing regarding an article titled, “Woodstock residents fill Opera House to oppose gravel pit plan.” According to this article, Plan Commission Chair Cody Sheriff “admonished the hundreds of people in the crowd to be civil.”

It also asserted that the Chair “admonished the crowd not to interrupt,” and “admonished the audience to allow Mr. Pease to finish.” That’s a nice word, “admonish.” In some cases, it’s too nice to be accurate. Granted, Mr. Sheriff was in a difficult position, trying to conduct a meeting where most in attendance were opposed to the proposal being made.

If he had actually admonished the crowd to be civil throughout the meeting, the crowd might have remained civil. Instead, at times, he rebuked the crowd in a most uncivilized way, yelling into a microphone and threatening to force people to leave. It was only after his first unnecessarily harsh rebuke that many in the crowd became unruly and the meeting momentarily descended into chaos.

Mr. Sheriff’s remarks were by no means always friendly, suggestive, and made in the spirit of counseling, as the word “admonish” would suggest. Had he gently admonished the audience when some began complaining that Mr. Pease’s presentation was unnecessarily long and repetitive, and demanding equal time, the meeting could have turned out very differently.

Instead, Mr. Sheriff’s painfully loud rebukes were inflammatory and only made the situation worse. Treating concerned citizens as unreasonable children is no way to effectively conduct a community forum.

William Tammone

Woodstock