Here’s a question for you: Forgetting the state’s open-meetings law and focusing instead on what’s moral and ethical, what is a local government’s responsibility to publicize its meetings?
For example, the Vance County Board of Education has a regular schedule for committee meetings and discusses upcoming meetings as part of committee reports during the monthly board meetings. And we just got a fax listing all committee meetings scheduled before the full board gathers again Oct. 10.
The Vance County Board of Commissioners, on the other extreme, schedules committee meetings out of public view, then never notifies the media (we don’t know whether all commissioners get the word or only those on the committee involved). But at least you know that you don’t know with the county, so you can keep checking with County Manager Jerry Ayscue or County Clerk Kelly Grissom for updates.
The Henderson government is perhaps the most maddening. It posts a list outside certain rooms at the Municipal Building to tell what meetings have been scheduled. But those meetings often are scheduled at the last minute, so they don’t appear on the list until hours before or even after the fact. Often the city sends out word by e-mail, but sometimes it doesn’t. The council routinely discusses the need for committee meetings at full council meetings but almost never schedules the meetings at that time.
And sometimes a meeting will be held without advance discussion, so there’s no way to know it’s coming unless someone involved in the city government lets you know.
What brings this up today is Friday’s meeting of the regional water advisory board. The newspaper got the word; we’re still waiting for our notification at HomeinHenderson. More important, however, is that we’re told several City Council members weren’t warned about the meeting.
That’s disturbing. For good or bad, the City Council operates with a policy that appoints specific members to committees but allows any member to attend any meeting. That system makes it difficult for two or three people to control and possibly manipulate key information.
We firmly believe that government works best when as many people as possible have all the information available. That’s the essence of democracy: people considering the facts and their goals to make decisions for the greater good.
We’re not accusing anyone of trying to exert control over information, particularly something as important as the proposed water contract between Henderson and the Army Corps of Engineers. But we have long been frustrated by the odd attitude of city leaders toward openness.
Committees that essentially are advisory — such as the Clean Up Henderson Committee, the Henderson Planning Board and the Vance Organization to Implement Community Excellence — can stick to a strict meeting schedule, but the council committees that make decisions seem to meet on whims. And meetings such as the public forums for the Weed and Seed application — the next is Monday at 6 p.m. at Greater Little Zion Holy Church — get publicity through e-mail and media contacts, while crucial meetings of the water advisory board and the finance committee occur in a virtual cone of silence.
This all comes down to city management and the council’s oversight of that management.
First, we’re begging the council to stop the practice of scheduling committee meetings through private conversations involving the city manager and the committee chairmen. The best idea would be to establish a schedule of committee meetings; monthly would be enough for most business. With or without such a schedule of standing meetings, the council ought to do any necessary meeting planning during the regular council meetings. The goal of establishing meetings is on the council agenda; how difficult is it for council members on the committees in question to come to the council meetings with calendars in hand, ready to schedule needed get-togethers?
Scheduling is one half of the problem; the other is notification.
City Manager Eric Williams might have the most complete e-mail address book in Vance County. With the click of a mouse, he can notify council members, the media, city staff, concerned citizens and more about anything the city is doing. So why not do it? At the city’s new Web site, create a sign-up for e-mail notification of all city meetings. The council then should insist that Williams follows through and sends a message to everyone on that list as soon as a meeting is arranged, with timely reminders the day before and the day of meetings.
Such openness is the least the Henderson government can do if it exists to serve the people of the city.