February 9, 2017 – The wheels of government ground to a halt on Monday, Feb. 6 at a combined work and business session of the Clay County Commission.
The meeting began with 28 items on the posted agenda. However, things stopped early after Eastern District Commissioner Luann Ridgeway made a motion to add an executive session to the beginning of the meeting. When Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte wanted the reason why the session was needed, he stopped the meeting to ask the county counselor Kevin Graham.
The move drew criticism from Ridgeway, who didn’t think they were allowed to stop the meeting unless he was going to speak with staff.
“I think in this particular instance what I would like to do is stand at ease for five minutes,” Nolte said. “I would like to know why we’re going to executive session. It’s hard to make an intelligent move without some frame of reference other than just (legal and contractual). Unless you want to tell me (why the executive session is needed) I was going to ask counsel and I can’t really do that in a public meeting. That sort of defeats the purpose of executive sessions.”
After Nolte conferred with Graham, he did not see the need for an executive session to be held before the regular agenda, but the executive session was added anyway with votes from Ridgeway and Western District Commissioner Gene Owen.
“There appear to be a goodly number of people here to speak,” Nolte said. “We have a large number of items on the agenda and we seem to get a little long on our executive sessions. I don’t know that I see the purpose of moving that forward.”
After the insertion of the executive session, Ridgeway made another move that drew the ire of the presiding commissioner. She moved to remove three of the items from the Agenda placed on at the request of Nolte. Owen, as per usual, agreed and the following items were axed: to cease eviction actions at Smithville Lake until the county can hear the evidence and decide how to proceed, reverting the meeting order to allow public comment to come earlier in the meeting and an item that would post the entire county budget on the Clay County Transparency Portal.
“I’m going to make a motion to table those,” Ridgeway said. “But I also want to make a statement to members of the public who are here to speak on those items. There is a public comment section on the agenda which immediately follows our agenda and these were pretty far down the list anyway. There will be a time for public comment, where any member of the public can speak on those items.”
Nolte then countered and stated his intention to add a special term on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m., in the commission chambers to discuss the Smithville Lake controversy.
“Once again, I think we are running into a problem here,” Nolte said. “There are a lot of people who have taken off work. A lot of people have been here to discuss this. Putting this way at the end of the agenda is a bad idea and bad public policy.”
Read the rest of this story in the Friday, February 10 issue of the Standard
-Bryce Mereness