11/10/09 Commissioners Meeting

Tuesday Nov. 10th I attended the 9:00 a.m. city commissioners meeting. I will have to admit city officials have made it hard on me to attend this early morning meeting. I was again a few minutes late because my morning routines are more important to me than these meetings.

I am a Grandfather who has 6 wonderful grandchildren. Like a lot of other grandparents these days I have 3 of my grandchildren ages 5, 6, 17, and their mother my daughter who live with my wife and me. Our daughter works in Lexington, so I help with the 5 and 6 year olds every morning getting them ready for school and help get them on the school bus each morning.
After that my attention turns to my wife. My wife has serious health problems. She can’t walk and is in a wheelchair. I have a lift that I use to get her up and about. By the time I do everything for her to get our day started, it’s a pretty good rush to get to the meeting on time.

I will tell you when Commissioner Fryman seen me come into the room, he interrupted the conversation that was going on to recognize me and ask:" Did I have any public comments to make". I told him no thanks. I really do appreciate the fact Mr. Fryman gave me that courtesy.

The reason I was there this time was just to hear what was going on in our local government. That way I could express my opinion about the meeting agenda on this blog.
I found two different topics of discussing rather amusing that our city officials were having among themselves.

1. One item on their agenda that came up was for them to approve the surplus of Police Department Canine Dog. I must say I wasn’t aware that Paris Police Department no longer had their Canine Dog Unit, it doesn’t seem that long ago that we finally got one and now we don’t.
So my comments are only about how they were handling the subjects.
They actually voted on to surplus the dog. The vote was 2-yes and 3-no so the dogs fate is still undecided.

This was early in the meeting when they voted. Later on toward the end of the meeting the mayor brought the subject about the dog up again. They got into a pretty heated discussion about the dog among themselves trying to talk over each other.
I thought for a moment I would speak up and remind them their meeting was run by "Roberts Rule of Order" [for those of you who may not be familiar with this: The short answer it is a book of parliamentary procedure of how to run an orderly meeting] but I didn’t say anything, I’m sure they would have just told me I was out of order. Whatever they decide to do with the dog, I wish the dog well because I am an animal lover.

2. The other item on their agenda was the sale of City of Paris water to Harrison County. It sounded like an issue that certainly needed some attention about a contract proposal. Again it didn’t take them long to start talking over each other on this topic.
The discussion sounded like one of those internal issues were the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing?
This could have been another time to remind them of "Roberts Rule of Order " like I was told in one of the meetings back in the summer.

The rest of items on the meeting agenda seemed to go pretty normal .

Just a couple closing statements,
It has now been 12 weeks since I ask questions to city officials about Chapter 62: Alcoholic Beverage Ordinance and they still have not give me answers.
It has been 8 weeks since I ask city officials to update the city of Paris website. I still have no response back to me from city officials.

That’s all for now,
John Marshall
　
I welcome your comments