Join other Polk County citizens overseeing the Board of Commissioners. If you want to speak, sign up at the lectern at the front of the room before the 7 pm meeting starts.
Newly-Elected (and re-elected) Commissioners Ray Gasperson (high vote getter), Shane Bradley and Keith Holbert will be sworn into office.
There will actually be two meetings. The first meeting, starting at 7 pm, will be the last meeting under the current board, Ted's last meeting. The second meeting will be the organizational meeting of the new board and the adoption of the new board's meeting procedures.
There is only one citizen comment period scheduled, at the beginning of the first meeting. So comments pertaining to both meetings will have to be made during the first one. There's plenty on, and off, the agenda to talk about.
Hot Topics: There's yet another closed session during the first meeting. It's likely that this one is to hire Marche Pittman as the regular county manager.
The editor didn't get this from anyone "talking out of school". Rather a later agenda item states that the "County Manager" (not the interim county manager) will be asked to write up a job description for a human resources employee and prepare a budget for the position.
The additional human resources officer is another "hot topic." In previous administrations, either the county manager or the clerk to the board of commissioners held that position, not an extra, expensive employee.
During the second meeting, the "new" board will adopt the rules for meetings. According to the board packet, they will be the same rules the last board used.
1. Only three minutes per citizen per meeting.
2. Unless there is a second to a motion, no discussion of the motion will be allowed. Shouldn't this be changed to allow discussion without a second to a motion? That's what the North Carolina School of Government recommends.
3. The rule that agenda items must be stated clearly and fully enough that other commissioners and the public may know what is going to be discussed is still missing. It was removed by the current majority. Shouldn't that rule be restored? Who could be against that??!! Why would anybody be against that?
4. The rule that agenda items can be added after the Tuesday, close of business deadline only if there's an emergency is still watered down to allow the chair to add anything to the agenda, any time, even after the start of a meeting. We've seen how that has been abused in the past by this majority. Doesn't that need to be tightened up again?
5. The Commissioners usually get the meeting agendas on the Wednesday before the next Monday meeting. Yet the Clerk is told to hold the agenda, in secret from the public and the press, until the Friday before the meeting. Why can't the public and the press see the agenda (and the agenda packet) at the same time as the Commissioners get the final form? Why the arbitrary, and wholly unnecessary, secrecy?
This will be Shane Bradley's first meeting, lets wish him well and hope that he is interested in what's best for ALL of Polk county, not just voting lock-step with his party.
Here's the link to the meeting packet:
http://www.polknc.org/commissioners/your_commissioners/docs/12_1_14_BOC_Packet.pdf
Newly-Elected (and re-elected) Commissioners Ray Gasperson (high vote getter), Shane Bradley and Keith Holbert will be sworn into office.
There will actually be two meetings. The first meeting, starting at 7 pm, will be the last meeting under the current board, Ted's last meeting. The second meeting will be the organizational meeting of the new board and the adoption of the new board's meeting procedures.
There is only one citizen comment period scheduled, at the beginning of the first meeting. So comments pertaining to both meetings will have to be made during the first one. There's plenty on, and off, the agenda to talk about.
Hot Topics: There's yet another closed session during the first meeting. It's likely that this one is to hire Marche Pittman as the regular county manager.
The editor didn't get this from anyone "talking out of school". Rather a later agenda item states that the "County Manager" (not the interim county manager) will be asked to write up a job description for a human resources employee and prepare a budget for the position.
The additional human resources officer is another "hot topic." In previous administrations, either the county manager or the clerk to the board of commissioners held that position, not an extra, expensive employee.
During the second meeting, the "new" board will adopt the rules for meetings. According to the board packet, they will be the same rules the last board used.
1. Only three minutes per citizen per meeting.
2. Unless there is a second to a motion, no discussion of the motion will be allowed. Shouldn't this be changed to allow discussion without a second to a motion? That's what the North Carolina School of Government recommends.
3. The rule that agenda items must be stated clearly and fully enough that other commissioners and the public may know what is going to be discussed is still missing. It was removed by the current majority. Shouldn't that rule be restored? Who could be against that??!! Why would anybody be against that?
4. The rule that agenda items can be added after the Tuesday, close of business deadline only if there's an emergency is still watered down to allow the chair to add anything to the agenda, any time, even after the start of a meeting. We've seen how that has been abused in the past by this majority. Doesn't that need to be tightened up again?
5. The Commissioners usually get the meeting agendas on the Wednesday before the next Monday meeting. Yet the Clerk is told to hold the agenda, in secret from the public and the press, until the Friday before the meeting. Why can't the public and the press see the agenda (and the agenda packet) at the same time as the Commissioners get the final form? Why the arbitrary, and wholly unnecessary, secrecy?
This will be Shane Bradley's first meeting, lets wish him well and hope that he is interested in what's best for ALL of Polk county, not just voting lock-step with his party.
Here's the link to the meeting packet:
http://www.polknc.org/commissioners/your_commissioners/docs/12_1_14_BOC_Packet.pdf