Our View: LCC board needs a reset. One change to its meeting format could help.

We hope everyone invested in Lane Community College’s future got some rest over the holidays.

That’s because the behavior of campus leaders in the next few months will answer a pivotal question for the college: Do the self-destructive battles that defined LCC in 2025 lead to hard bargains in 2026? Or were they just a preview of worse fights to come?

Tomorrow’s LCC Board of Education meeting brings the key players in last year’s dramas — the board, administrators and the faculty union — back together for the first time in the new year. For the sake of LLC’s reputation, we hope all sides take the new year as an opportunity to lower their voices.

It would be a much-needed change from the past three months, which have seen:

• An apology from the board to President Stephanie Bulger for abusive and bullying behavior toward her
• Marathon board meetings marked by hours of heated and often personal criticism of college administrators by faculty members and union supporters
• Decisions about the college’s long-term budget repeatedly pushed down the road by a board that often seems exhausted from all the controversy

Five-hour meetings that end with little progress on major issues are no way to run a board. Especially one that has just two months until members are expected to vote on a proposed $8 million spending reduction plan for the college — a plan administrators say is vital to maintaining enough cash reserves, but one the union has assailed as unnecessary and rushed.

We’ll leave the merits of the budget plan, and the stakes in the ongoing contract negotiations, for another day.

To restore LCC’s board to a functioning one, its members should acknowledge that the format of its public meetings is broken. Then they should change it to better balance the public’s right to be heard and the board’s need to do its job.

Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds. LCC’s board can look to the Eugene City Council, which has modified its public comment format several times over the past decade in response to controversial issues taking up council time. Most would agree that City Council meetings run more smoothly as a result.

A decade ago, the City Council scheduled a community meeting for the public to weigh in on possible solutions to the youth homeless issue downtown. It has since scheduled other forums on similar hot-button issues. The council has also repeatedly tweaked how long each speaker has to comment, in order to give themselves more time to conduct business.

Some changes have already been suggested to the LCC board, including a 30-minute cap on its public comment period, or restricting them to written comments only.

But we’re big proponents of letting the public speak, especially when we know there are strong differences of opinion.

We think the best solution for the LCC board is to try what Eugene did with the youth homeless issue. As long as the budget issue continues to rage, split the public comment section out into a separate monthly public forum. Give members of the community two or three hours to make any comments they want about the school’s budget plan or the faculty union contract negotiations.

Then, hold regular board meetings with a 30-minute public comment period for any issues not related to the budget or contract. Anyone who still wants to raise issues about those topics can submit their comment in writing.

The stakes and tensions have been so high because everyone involved knows how important the college is to Lane County. More than 17,000 future business leaders, health care professionals, IT technicians, trades workers, and professionals in dozens of other fields are trained there each year, and alumni have generated more than $500 million in added annual income regionally as graduates advance to higher-wage jobs.

There’s no way to guarantee that everyone who gets a chance to speak will feel heard. But our proposal might lead to a process that feels fair to the public, and gives the board a chance to review the president’s budget plan with the scrutiny — and open-mindedness — their roles as elected officials require.