Prior to this June 9, 2017 CCC Board of Trustees meeting the Trustees had passed a motion to allow citizens to speak to the Board for a maximum of three minutes. The Board made a big deal out of this like they were doing something great for the citizens of Cleveland County. State Law requires all such board meeting to have a Public Participation session on their agenda and provide minimum requirements. The CCC Board of Trustees had finally decided to obey that law and adopted a MINIMUM standard for Cleveland County Citizens. Same as the Commissioners and the School Board. (“Minimum standards” are the key words here. All in all the CCC Board of Trustees obviously regret the fact that the longstanding shenanigans that they overlooked for years have been discovered. The gridlock on the CCC Board is just an attempt to hang on until Cleveland County citizens get tired of hearing about this mess and turn their attention to something else.)
So, I decided I would attend this meeting for the first time on June 9, 2017. Other citizens also decided to attend. To the best of my knowledge, this June 9, 2017 CCC Board meeting was the first time ever to have members of the public attend their meeting-much less speak. It was totally obvious the CCC Board of Trustees were not prepared to be have witnesses, members of the public, in attendance.
The meeting was shown on the CCC Website as beginning at 12:00 PM in the Schenck Board Meeting Room in the Jack Hunt Building. Since I didn’t know exactly where this room was, I got there around 11:30 AM and scouted around a bit. I found a map of the Jack Hunt Building and found the Board Meeting Room was on the second floor. I climbed the stairs to the second floor. School was out so not many people were around. I walked up to two ladies I saw through an open door and asked for directions. They gave me directions and I introduced myself to these ladies and they introduced themselves to me. From the conversation that followed it became obvious that both of these ladies were very disappointed in the way CCC was being ran.
Then I walked a little further and found the Schenck Board Meeting Room area and walked into what was an anteroom (reception room) for the main Boardroom. I was still early and nobody was sitting at what I thought was the receptionists desk. So, I looked around a bit, saw the Board Room door was open and walked toward that open door and saw some folks milling around. I walked past a fancy food serving area where steam was coming out of a number of covered serving trays. The food smelled good and I thought “these guys and gals are treating themselves to a nice catered meal at taxpayers expense.”
Then I entered the Boardroom proper. It was a relatively small room that surely was NOT intended for members of the public to attend. Then I saw the big fancy elongated oval Board Room table. The table was highly polished, set with fine china, spotless lily white cloth napkins, fine silverware and what appeared to be crystal water glasses. All being set and arranged by a number of waitresses who had CCC ID tags around their necks. Everything was first class. No box lunches, plastic utensils and a bottle of water for this Board of Trustees crowd.
