The Barry County Board of Commissioners Tuesday held a committee of the whole meeting in the morning and a regular board meeting in the afternoon to accommodate the Christmas holiday. Two changes in board rules were discussed at both meetings.
Rules making the chair’s position a two year seat instead of one in 2015 and giving the chair the power to delay a commissioner's agenda request in 2018 were both rescinded by unanimous vote.
Commissioner Jon Smelker, who put the proposals on the agenda, maintained that commissioners have the right to submit agenda items for upcoming meetings. If the chair feels an item from a commissioner should be delayed and the commissioner agrees, that’s fine, he said.
“But, if it’s something I feel I want on the agenda, I want the authority to do that. And I think as a commissioner from my district, I should have it.”
When the change was made earlier this year, Commissioner Vivian Conner argued that the commissioners are equals and all have the right to put items on an agenda without delay.
“I agree any commissioner who wants to put an item on the agenda should be able to,” Commissioner/Chair Ben Geiger said. “The challenge is how to do that without three hour meetings.”
He offered a new agenda category; a supplemental agenda with postponed items, unscheduled items and commissioner priority items. Any of those could be taken out if the meeting had a light agenda, or left in the supplemental agenda if the meeting was running long.
“I like to keep it simple,” Conner said. “Our agenda has been working and I don’t see why we need to do the supplemental agenda. I also agree as commissioners we know what’s going on in our districts and sometimes things come at a time when they have to be discussed and dealt with promptly.”
“I have to agree that up to 2015, we never had any problems,” Commissioner Howard “Hoot” Gibson said. “So what’s the matter with going back to the way it was? We got along that way for years.”
On the chair’s term length, Commissioner David Jackson said two years for the chair would provide consistency in leadership. “I like predictability in leadership and it keeps politics out of it.”
“One year is fine,” Commissioner Dan Parker said. “If we don’t appreciate the leadership, we can change it at that time. If things are going well, we can appoint them again.”
After the vote, Geiger, who voted against recommending the changes at the committee of the whole meeting in the morning, explained his “yes” vote in the afternoon.
“The more we discussed it, the more it looked like a solution in search of a problem.”
