~by Tori Riley, GreeneCountyNewsOnline
Last week was a good week for the Jefferson city council and a bad week for the county board of supervisors.
First, the Jefferson city council…
The council at its Jan. 12 meeting approved paying a local business, Sebourn Video Services, to record every regular council meeting and post it for public viewing on Jefferson Telecom’s public access cable channel.
In addition, SVS will live stream the meetings on Facebook and YouTube. Every word spoken at a council meeting and every vote taken can be watched and heard by anyone interested.
Residents have always had access to official meeting minutes, but minutes only reflect motions and resolutions approved or disapproved, and council members’ votes. The recording fills in the blanks, adding the discussion points and comments made.
By agreeing to live streaming and recording meetings, the city council has committed itself to transparency. Of course there will continue to be telephone calls and conversations the public won’t know about, but when it comes time to take action, the public can watch the council conduct the city’s business.
Adding a Zoom option allows the public to interact during the meeting. Mayor Matt Gordon serves as meeting host. Using the Chat function on Zoom, someone can ask a question or even ask to be recognized to speak.
According to council member Darren Jackson, the council is making an investment in transparent government.
GreeneCountyNewsOnline applauds that action.
GCNO also applauds the council for paying attention to $400,000 in public support for the new animal shelter and looking for a way to complete the fundraising.
A new animal shelter will serve as another plus in community development, one that will attract young professionals and families looking for a place to call home. We offer exemplary school buildings, an up-to-date medical center, an attractive downtown district, all things we’re proud to show to visitors. In another 18 months or so, we’ll be able to show visitors a proper animal shelter.
That’s all good.
And now, about the county board of supervisors….
In contrast to the city council’s embrace of transparency, the supervisors have balked at the idea of using technology to keep their meetings available to the public during a pandemic.
The idea of recording supervisor meetings for public viewing has been broached more than once in recent years. Every time, the suggestion has been met with thumbs down.
The supervisors added audio-only Zoom to their meetings last March when the courthouse was closed to the public due to the pandemic. They reluctantly agreed to continue using Zoom when the building re-opened, but that came with a reminder that they aren’t required to do so. The supervisors are doing interested taxpaying citizens a favor by providing access to those who, for reasons of public safety, prefer to stay within their own virus safety zone.
It’s been brought to the supervisors’ attention that the audio quality on Zoom is poor, that it’s difficult to hear people speaking from the gallery. Sheriff Jack Williams’ baritone is particularly difficult to decipher.
Nothing has been done to remedy the situation. For the cost of a couple of microphones, people would be able to hear what’s going on. And, for that matter, the county has an IT specialist on staff. Why are the supervisors still foundering with technology?
They’ve provided the answer. They prefer people to comment or present their grievances face-to-face. That’s despite the fact that supervisors have taken telephone calls from constituents for decades. We’re supposed to just trust them – after all, a majority of the people who voted, voted for them. They don’t want to be part of a reality television show. Transparent government does not equal reality television, since we all know reality television is scripted.
If the supervisors aren’t comfortable with making their meetings easily accessible, perhaps they need to up their professionalism so they have nothing to worry about.
The supervisors at their Thursday meeting made a poor week terrible by not allowing patriotic music to be played from the Mahanay tower on Inauguration Day.
They invoked their public art policy, a policy put in place to ward off a White supremacist group or some other group espousing hate doctrines displaying something on the courthouse grounds. The policy allows the supervisors to decide what they want expressed through various forms of art, and to initiate the production of art by calling for displays or performances that meet their message.
They haven’t used the policy to dictate the music played from the Mahanay tower until now. The Bell Tower Foundation has initiated live concert series by the “Mahanay Maestros” without notifying the supervisors what music the local maestros intended to play. The maestros have been allowed to select their own music.
A volunteer continues to program the digital music that plays hourly. He hasn’t been asked to provide his play list for the supervisors’ approval. We hear patriotic music and sacred music, just as Floyd Mahanay requested when he gifted the county with funds for the now iconic bell tower.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that it was the Greene County Democrats who wanted to have someone play patriotic music following the inauguration of Joe Biden as our country’s 46th president.
A member of the Democrat central committee asked a member of the Bell Tower Foundation board for approval to have someone do so. That person passed the request along to the entire board, which passed the request up to the supervisors.
The supervisors are all Republicans. Do you suppose if it were a Republican being sworn in as President that they would have responded they same way? My guess is the response would have been, “Of course. That’s a great idea. Make it happen.”
The Democrats didn’t ask to play “Happy Days Are Here Again.” They wanted to honor and salute the (hopefully) peaceful transition of power. We need “God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her.” Republicans and Democrats agree on that, I hope.
The back pedal on this could be to nix all Tower Tunes Live events unless the selected music is pre-approved by the county supervisors, who are definitely equipped and entitled to be arbiters of music, just as they’re equipped and entitled to be arbiters of all art.
Or maybe the supervisors should revisit their public art policy.
Either way, they didn’t do much for good government last week. Maybe they can do better.
