Night Meetings for County Board Start in May

In May, we will shift County Board meetings to the evenings, with a 6:00 start time.  This is something I led the fight for.  I want to give the public easy access to meetings. 

Some of the old guard on the board don't like this, and are recruiting past board members from the old guard to run again, hoping to move meetings back to 9:00 a.m.  They want to make it more difficult for the public to attend meetings.  Despite every other legislative body in Washington County meeting in the evenings (every city council, every town board, every school board), they want daytime meetings.

Daytime meetings raise suspicion about what we are doing.  I have received a lot of feedback from people who were angry that meetings on key issues were being held in the daytime.  They thought we were trying to do something sneaky, and that's why we wanted to make it hard for the public to attend.  I even talked to someone whose employer was a County Board Supervisor, who wouldn't let her off from work so that she could attend a meeting on an issue that was important to her.

I want to keep meetings in the evenings, so that anyone from the public can attend, without having to take off from work.