Chairman David attempts to cut meeting time with revised agenda
Grady County commissioners are taking a wait and see approach to the new way of business introduced Tuesday by new Commission Chairman T.D. David.
This was the first meeting in which routine items such as the approval of meeting minutes and of invoices for expenditures previously approved in the budgeting process are approved all at once as consent items.
“This is a small attempt to reduce the length of our meetings. If we all do our homework before we meet and there are no questions with these routine items we can dispatch with them forthwith. If someone has a question then that item will be transferred to formal actions and dealt with there where it can be discussed,” Chairman David said Tuesday morning.
He noted that other county commissions as well as the Grady County Board of Education conducts their business in a similar fashion.
Grady County Administrator Carlos Tobar said that consent items should be “routine and noncontroversial issues.”
“If an item has to be pulled and moved to formal action then I haven’t done my job. It is my job to determine what is routine and what might warrant additional discussion,” Tobar said.
“I live out in the country. Some might call it the sticks. We don’t accept change too fast. I don’t mind trying it, but I don’t think it will save any time and very little paper, but if y’all think it will work I’m willing to try it. I’ve been on the board 31 years and I can be lead a long way, but I don’t want to be driven nowhere. This has the tendency of trying to tell the board what to do without much discussion. That’s just my opinion,” Commissioner Elwyn Childs said.
Commissioner Charles Norton said that he felt similarly and noted that although certain expenditures are considered during the budget process the cost in the budget is only a projection whereas the invoice is the actual cost.
Chairman David thanked both men for sharing their concerns and said he thanked the board for trying the new approach for a few meetings to see how it worked.
