Our first Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, January 7, was a marathon day of 9.5 hours long.
HIGHLIGHTS
Agenda Discussion
* At the beginning of the Agenda, I made the motion to move the Board Rules from an Action item to a Discussion item as I recognized there was a lot of work to do on it and would need a legal review as well as review of the edits by both the Board and the public. This motion failed with a 7-4 vote. Later in the meeting, this action item was tabled to be voted on at our next BOC meeting.
Public Comment
* I made it clear that I wanted to leave public comment how it’s been for the past two years -allowing the public to speak unhindered on any topic both before any action items were to be discussed and voted on by the Board as well as after the Board’s decisions and votes. At this point, the Board agreed in leaving it as is. The final Board Rules are set to be voted on on Tuesday, January 14.
Prayer in the Public Square
* I shared my opinion that continuing to allow people from the community to lead us in prayer prior to our meetings was something that pastors had voiced their support for in the past year. At this point, the majority of the Board shared they would like to change this to only having County Commissioners lead the invocation. The final Board Rules are set to be voted on on Tuesday, January 14.
Administrative State of the County
* I voiced my concern that county policy was being disregarded in how the Board was seeking to appoint a constituent to a Commission. My concern was overridden with a 7-4 vote.
* I voted no on hiring our next interim administrator Gary Rosema which passed with a 7-4 vote. The relationship between the Board and the Administrator, the Board and Corporate Counsel, and then Corporate Counsel working with the Administrator, are very important roles, which are interconnected.
In a conversation with Teeples and Rosema, Commissioner Moss said he was told they were considering hiring Van Essen, who had been fired after government overreach during the Covid-19 pandemic. I had a similar conversation with both of them and I am in agreement with Moss’ words: “Van Essen has demonstrated a pattern of ignoring the law, toxicity to constituents, willingness to abuse government power to threaten citizens, lying, and more.”
Resolutions
There were several standard resolutions that came to us from the Treasurer’s office that get voted on each year, which all passed with a 11-0 vote.
Here is an article covering the meeting:
Here is a video of Commissioners Rhodea and Moss chatting about the meeting:
I invite you to compare the two pieces above with the full meeting below: