{"id":2437,"date":"2011-01-28T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/what-you-didnt-hear-at-the-county-commission-meeting.html"},"modified":"2011-01-28T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-28T23:00:00","slug":"what-you-didnt-hear-at-the-county-commission-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/what-you-didnt-hear-at-the-county-commission-meeting.html","title":{"rendered":"What you didn’t hear at the County Commission meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\nThe interesting commission meeting will be the next<\/em> one.\nRemember,\n\nChairman Paulk said they were still operating by the old rules<\/a>\nat the meeting that happened this week.\nSo next meeting they may actually refuse to let people speak\non certain topics.\n

\nOn the\n\nFrank Barnas Newstalk105.9 WVGA radio show 25 Jan 2011 the morning\nbefore the County Commission meeting,<\/a>\nCounty Commmission Chairman Ashley Paulk\ncomplained that Citizens Wishing to be Heard has been abused\nand meetings are not free; there are people to pay.\n

\n\n<\/a>\n“In these times we’ve got to run efficient meetings.”\n<\/blockquote>\nChairman Paulk also invoked Tuscon and said:\n
\n“You need to monitor people who are there.”\n

\n…\n

\n“You want a little better control over who and where they are.”\n<\/blockquote>\nSo\n\nposting videos of the meeting to the web<\/a>\nshould be a good idea so everyone could see what is going on.\n

\nAnd in the larger picture, should we be more concerned with\na few dollars now or with the\nability of citizens to be heard\nor for that matter with the\nlong-term economics and health of the county?\n

Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to be Heard<\/H3>\nThe host asked if tonight would be the time to comment on the new policy,\nand Chairman Paulk responded:\n\n\n
\n“This really isn’t a policy to be commented on;\nthis is a policy set by the county.”\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nWell, lots of people commented on it anyway,\nand at least one commissioner said afterwards that he wanted\n\nsuggestions on how to improve it.<\/a>\n

\nPaige Dukes remarked on the radio:\n

\n\n<\/a>\n“About five meetings ago there was no Citizens Wishing to be Heard.”\n<\/blockquote>\nShe noted that it’s not a state-mandated procedure.\n

\nIndeed it’s not, but it’s still a good idea.\n

\nDukes and Paulk said on the radio, as the Chairman said at the meeting,\nthat commissioners are available in their offices and\nhe himself<\/a>:\n

\n“I’m here every morning.”\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe radio host warned Dukes and Paulk that this new policy could\nbecome a campaign issue in a year or two.\nThe Chairman allowed as how he wasn’t worried about that:\n

\n“Everything could become a campaign issue”\n…\n“Anything I do I’m going to do what I think is right for the general\npopulation of this county.”\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s laudable.\nBut how do elected officials know what’s right unless they listen\nto the citizens?\nNobody knows everything, after all.\n

The Biomass Topic<\/H3>\nThe host asked if the new policies and procedures were because\nof the biomass topic.\nThe Chairman didn’t deny that, and appeared to elaborate on that\nbeing exactly the reason.\nHe said he has a list of the times biomass opponents have come to speak:\n
\n“16-18 times over 18 months.”\n<\/blockquote>\nHe didn’t mention that the first time was in a hearing about rezoning\nof the site for the proposed biomass plant,\nnot in Citizens Wishing to be Heard.\nI think he did mention that\n\nat a previous meeting.<\/a>\nI hope the county is not proposing to prohibit opponents of rezoning from\nspeaking in rezoning hearings.\n

\nThe Chairman also said:\n

\n“The Commission …\nif it’s a matter they’ve made a decision on, they’ve taken a vote on,\nit’s a matter that doesn’t need to be discussed.\nIf something new came up on it we have the option of discussing it.”\n<\/blockquote>\nThat may be true for a procedure in the Sheriff’s department\nas applied to law enforcement personnel.\nIt’s not quite the same for decisions of an elected board in a democracy.\n

\nAnd specifically regarding the biomass topic:\n

\n“The county took a vote on it…\nThe EPA and EPD and the authorities that issue the permits\nfelt it was permittable and that’s where we stand on it.”\n<\/blockquote>\nIt’s interesting that later the same day\nhe \npublicly thanked Susan Wehling for sending email on that very subject<\/a>\nand he\n\npromised Bobbi Anne Hancock<\/a>:\n
\n“I will seek an answer.”\n<\/blockquote>\nWe’ll see what comes of that.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nMore of Chairman Paulk’s opinions on the biomass topic:\n

\n“But we’re just not going to provide a public venue forever for a cause.”\n

\n…\n“I received a petition for one tenth of one percent of the people of this\ncounty.\nAnd you know I’ve got quite a few calls and everything else\nfrom other people who say let’s run the county and not look at this one issue.”\n<\/blockquote>\nChairman Paulk\n\nsaid much the same thing about that petition at the 11 Jan 2011 meeting.<\/a>\nIt’s interesting that he doesn’t attempt to quantify the “quite a few calls and everything else”.\nHe also doesn’t say who they were from.\nThis is why we need public debate: so we find out these and other things\nrelated to topics of public importance.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nPersonally, I think the tax-funded entity that should have provided\nthe public forum is the Industrial Authority, since it’s the one\nthat is promoting the project in question.\nBut VLCIA\n\nfailed to do so; as their moderator said:<\/a>\n

\n“we’re not going to get into debate”\n<\/blockquote>\nSo it’s not surprising that people are availing themselves of other\npublic forums.\n

\nRemember that the new rules weren’t actually being used at the\nmost recent (25 Jan 2011) meeting.\nNext time they will be.\nGiven how different what was said and how it was said on the radio\nin the morning vs. in the meeting room in the evening that same day,\nI wonder whether the meeting represented any actual change in tune,\nor was all the talk about being available in the office simply\nsetting up for banning certain subjects in future public meetings?\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The interesting commission meeting will be the next one. Remember, Chairman Paulk said they were still operating by the old rules at the meeting that happened this week. So next meeting they may actually refuse to let people speak on certain topics. On the Frank Barnas Newstalk105.9 WVGA radio show 25 Jan 2011 the morning […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,120,48,49,2,41,20,88,21,22,32,1577,178],"tags":[679,8738,943,8721,8701,7,8734,656,8712,882,8700],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-code-enforcement","category-elections","category-government","category-health-care","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-radio-2","category-vlcia","tag-ashley-paulk","tag-biomass","tag-citizens-wishing-to-be-heard","tag-elections","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-paige-dukes","tag-politics","tag-radio","tag-transparency"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Dj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}