Does the Citizen Communications time too large?

From Seattle Times: (in an article about keeping guns off city property.)

You may find this article off this tinyurl link: http://tinyurl.com/7ozsjw

"Any sort of ban is gun control," she said, after speaking for her allotted 90 seconds against the measure. Moments later she told a newspaper reporter: "It's the same old argument going around and around." Carender said she is among those "trying to protect their right to keep and bear arms."

<..Snips rest of article..>

Now is this really gettting to a point that 90 seconds is the absolute time for the community member to discuss how they feel about a subject? Now I understand that the City of Vancouver sets it up as 3 minutes or 180 seconds.

But why did they shorten a community members time to discuss an item in front of the Seatte City Council?

I am curious to know why Citizens are not given time to discuss a subject?

Going to do more research do to find out more about the amount of discussion time. (This thread is NOT about the gun control measure. If you want to discuss that, please go to the link and post on the seattle times forums.)