There is a certain energy that settles over a room when public comment begins. It is part confession booth, part open mic night, part therapy session conducted under fluorescent lighting. People approach the podium carrying folded notes, old frustrations and, occasionally, the unmistakable look of someone who has been rehearsing this speech in the car for three weeks.

Sometimes public comment is genuinely valuable. It gives residents a direct line to elected officials without requiring appointments, connections or a working knowledge of parliamentary procedure. It can surface problems that otherwise drift quietly under the radar. A pothole gets fixed. A dangerous intersection gets attention. A neighborhood concern reaches the people empowered to address it.

But there is another side to these sessions, and it surfaced at the May 11 Portsmouth Town Council meeting.

One resident spoke critically about Ragged Island Brewing, saying music from the Bristol Ferry Road venue regularly carries into the surrounding neighborhood, particularly on Sundays. He acknowledged police had measured the sound and found the business operating within town limits, but said the noise still affects nearby residents’ quality of life.

Reasonable people can disagree about where the line exists between a thriving community venue and a neighborhood nuisance. That is not really the issue here. The issue is this: the business owner was not there. And perhaps more importantly, probably had no reason to think he needed to be.

That is the awkward flaw built into public comment sessions. The subjects are not announced ahead of time. There is no schedule reading, “Tonight’s grievances will include loud music, overgrown hedges and suspiciously aggressive leaf-blowers.” Anyone can walk up and criticize a business, neighbor or organization that has no idea it is about to become the topic of public discussion.

The imbalance feels unfair.

Not because criticism should be prohibited. Public scrutiny is part of civic life. Businesses operating in a community should expect feedback, including negative feedback. But criticism lands differently when delivered in a forum where one side speaks uninterrupted while the other side is absent, unaware and unable to respond.

And once something is said at a public meeting, it acquires a strange kind of permanence. Remarks enter the public record. They bounce around social media. They become snippets repeated later, detached from context. A complaint aired for three minutes can linger far longer than the meeting itself.

This is how public comment periods risk drifting from constructive civic engagement into something less productive — a kind of municipal gripe fest where frustrations, large and small, are aired before a captive audience.

That does not mean these sessions should disappear. They serve an important purpose. But perhaps they require a little restraint from everyone involved, including speakers, officials and those of us listening from the back row pretending not to eavesdrop while absolutely eavesdropping.

A useful rule of thumb might be this: if the criticism is serious enough that you would want an answer, it is serious enough that the subject deserves notice and an opportunity to respond.

For the record, the day after the meeting I emailed Ragged Island owner Matt Gray seeking comment. He declined.

Which, honestly, may have been the wisest decision anyone made all week.