County commission discusses agenda item placement

cbreaux@kentsmith.biz

The Holmes County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) has an agenda set for meetings where they usually discuss items as listed beforehand.

Sometimes, though, commissioners or others working with the board may request an item come up for discussion that’s not listed.

The procedure for bringing up agenda items was discussed during a BOCC meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 19, at the request of Chairman Jeff Good.

“When stuff is presented to us, Commissioner (Clint) Erickson said he’d like to have something in a binder for us to review,” Good said. “Adding stuff on without it being in the agenda, on votable items in my opinion, is not real transparent in my opinion.”

Erickson previously took issue with items not being on meeting agendas beforehand.

“I know we’ve talked about this a couple of times and I know there’s stuff that we do need to (handle),” Good said. “An emergency comes up. (Things that are) time-compliant.”

Good asked the BOCC how they wanted to proceed and that he can’t stop a commissioner from bringing up a previous non-agenda item during a meeting.

“Say there’s a citizen that’s really interested in the parks, what’s going on with the parks. Then there’s nothing on the agenda,” Good said. “He checks the Facebook (page). There’s nothing on the agenda about the parks, so he doesn’t come to the meeting. Then say I add the parks and it gets passed or declined without that citizen even getting to say two cents about it.”

Commissioner Earl Stafford said his only pet peeve is voting on an item not listed on the agenda beforehand if it involves the county spending money.

“You can talk about it but you ain’t got to vote on it,” Stafford said. 

Erickson said what gets put on the agenda and talked about is at the discretion of the BOCC chairman.

“That’s what you do, is run this meeting,” Erickson said. “Every commissioner has a right to put something on there if they need to. That’s doable. When you get into public comments and public this and public that, the meeting is ultimately ran by you and you make that decision.”

Good accepted Erickson’s input. The BOCC did not vote on any changes to agenda item placement protocol.

“I just wanted to bring it up. I know we’ve talked about it and I don’t want to harp on it,” Good said. “I’m a new chairman and I want to do this right. I just want to be as transparent as we can to the citizens with their money.”