By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com
The amount of leeway that a commissioner has in re-writing the history of a past meeting will be decided at tonight’s meeting of the Lee County Board of Commissioners.
On the agenda is consideration of a request from Commissioner Bill Carver to re-write a portion of the minutes from the October 18 meeting where Republicans outvoted Democrats 4-3 in the adoption of a plan to redraw the boundaries for the county’s four representative districts.
Carver wants to remove four sentences from the original draft of the minutes that describe the deliberations of commissioners on so-called “Plan F” and substitute 11 other sentences in their place that attempt to rationalize the thought processes of the majority as they rejected six other plans and adopted a seventh.
The move was initially brought up at a board meeting on Nov. 1, but members agreed to hold off on a vote until today.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham has said that Plan F was developed “behind closed doors in a process that lacked the transparency needed to instill public confidence” in both the process and the product. Carver’s revisions seek to establish a basis for the Republican majority’s vote in anticipation of a lawsuit that would attempt to overturn the new districts.
Also on the agenda is a recommendation from Carver to utilize up to 10 percent of the county’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocation of $11,999,847 to administer the remaining 90 percent. The recommendation says that doing so “will ease the demands on county staff and increase the opportunity to fully use the ARPA funds.”
Commissioners will also consider a proposed lease with FirstHealth of the Carolinas for use of county-owned property on Central Drive as a base of operations for its emergency and non-emergency medical services. Under terms of the agreement, FirstHealth would lease the property in Central Carolina Professional Park through June 30, 2026, at a rate of $5,186 per month. The property was previously the home of Central Carolina Advanced Life Support.
The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the Dennis A. Wicker Civic Center at 1801 Nash Street.
How very nasty to try to phony up evidence after the fact because you know what you did was so wrong you’re going to lose in court. Just a nasty thing to do. What a jerk.
“Here’s what we wish had happened.” Isn’t that the purpose of minutes? What actually happened can be so awkward.
While minutes are nice, I sure hope someone has a recording if it goes to court.
Draft minutes do not disappear from the Public Record once they are sent out to the Board. They exist within the context of the Clerk’s, Attorney, and County Manager’s records.
20 years ago you could go back and fix stupid statements or evidence of clear bias. It no longer matters what Carver is seeking to do because the publicity is its own record.