County Supervisors To Continue Having One Evening Meeting Every Month

The Mills County Board Supervisors will continue to have evening meetings on the first Tuesday of the month – at least for now.

The supervisors voted 2-1 to continue having the evening meetings following discussion at their regular meeting Tuesday, July 8. The evening meetings will continue to be at 6 p.m. at the Mills County Annex building.

Supervisor Jack Sayers, who initiated the idea of having one monthly meeting in the evening shortly after taking office in January, made the motion to continue the practice at last week’s meeting.

“I think it’s in the county’s best interest to do this, in my personal opinion,” he said. “We live stream our meetings and I think that’s a great for awareness, but the point of these meetings are for public participation. I think we have quite a few people who go and participate. Ever since we’ve been live streaming the meetings and ever since we’ve been having these night meetings, my opinion and my view, is after paying attention to county business for a while now, I think more people are becoming aware. I think that’s a good thing and I think it benefits us.”

Supervisor Richard Crouch expressed concerns about attendance at the evening meetings and the “burden” it puts on county employees that are required to attend.

“The last three meetings, we’ve had anywhere from two to three people from the public show up,” he said. “It puts a burden on some of our officials that have to make the meetings. They put in their eight hours of work in the daytime and then they have to spend an hour or so in the evening.”

Sayers addressed Crouch’s concerns about attendance, acknowledging that recent evening meetings have had only a few items on the agenda.

“At that first meeting, we had roughly around 50 people for the night meeting. A lot of people were pretty excited about it," he said. "Since then, we’ve had a pretty good showing, in my opinion. Of course, when we have one - last week we had two things on the agenda it was a holiday week - so only three or four people came out, but before that, it’s usually at least around 10.”

Supervisor Lonnie Mayberry delivered the lone “no” vote for continuing the evening meetings, noting that all meetings are live-streamed on the Internet.

“Live streaming has really opened it up. I think people are more aware and more involved,” Mayberry said. “They have access to what we’re doing and seeing. I just don’t think the participation has been that great.”

Mayberry added he would support having evening meetings on a quarterly basis.

After Crouch suggested not having evening meetings during winter months, Sayers amended his motion to say the evening meetings would be held “indefinitely, pending weather or any other conflicts.”

Crouch agreed to the amended motion, and along with Sayers, voted in favor of continuing the evening meetings.

“I’ll go with ‘aye,’ I guess we can always battle this out later,” he said.