Meeting Notes 1-3-22
Meeting Notes from the January 3rd Organizational Meeting of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners.
Meeting Packet: https://www.miottawa.org/appImages/Calendar/1640790322299-packet.PDF
Meeting Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er8Ui74Q1j4&feature=youtu.be
Election of Chair and Vice Chair: The Board elected Matt Fenske and Al Dannenberg as Chair and Vice-Chair, respectively.
Committee Assignments: I was pleased to be appointed to the following committees for the following year:
- Holland Local Development Authority Board
- Talent and Recruitment
- Ottawa County Community Mental Health Board
- Lakeshore Regional Entity Oversight Policy Board (SUD)
- Finance and Administration
2022 Rules of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners: The Board appoved, by a 7 to 3 vote the proposed 2022 Rules for the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners. I voted no on the measure.
I was disappointed that the rules package continued with section 3.6, which posits that our primary duty is to “advance the County’s corporate, legal and financial interests” and not the public good. I believe this interpretation has the continued strong potential to prevent Commissioners from fully exercising their duties to the residents of Ottawa County, which I believe should be first and foremost. It is my hope that we can continue addressing this so that we may have a Rules package that better allows us do our to job, not hinders us in doing so.
I am also concerned that the Resolutions section, instead of either allowing all resolutions or prohibiting all resolutions, continues to attempt to define Resolutions in a way that can be easily ignored when convenient, as we saw the past year with the Resolution against Vaccine Mandates.
This year was the first full year that the Rules Committee appeared as a Standing Committee. Initally, the Rules Committee was an non-public advisory committee. There was discussion about whether the Rules Committee should be Live-Streamed, because of its status as a Standing Committee, and previously, we had agreed to Live-Stream all standing committees. The determination was whether to revisit the issue prior to our next Rules Committee, scheduled for September.
