My proposal to move the county commissioners meetings to the evening generated a front page article in the Herald-Times today. Wow. The H-T has latched onto this and it looks like it will be an issue in the election. I hope it will be. I wanted to address a couple thing in today's article.
County government department heads and other staff are often required to attend commissioners meetings, so they’d have to get comp time or overtime pay if they had to attend an evening meeting.
Department heads are classified as "exempt" employees, so they don't get overtime or comp time. That only applies to non-exempt employees.
Stoops said county boards of commissioners aren’t required to provide time for the public to speak at their meetings, but the Monroe County commissioners do every week. Citizens are welcome to discuss whatever is on their mind.
Stoops is speaking of a general public comment time here, but my understanding is that public comment is required when government bodies vote on legislative matters. The two are very different. I have been trying to find information on that and have thus far been unable to do so.
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