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Forest Hill Road |
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Macon, Ga
Minutes and Records Disappear in Smoke |
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Forest Hill Road |
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Macon, Ga
Minutes and Records Disappear in Smoke |
Minutes and Records just
Disappear
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- The Macon Telegraph -
Posted on Sat, Oct. 20, 2007 |
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http://www.macon.com/198/story/165261.htmlPolitical notebook: Yet another Forest Hill disagreementControversies and the Forest Hill Road widening project have never been far apart. For example, during the recent debates concerning the project, the truth about who attended a special meeting of the Bibb County Commission last December and who said what while they were at that meeting has become something of a Holy Grail for the people who oppose the project. Opponents of the plan say Bibb County's official meeting minutes were changed to obscure what really happened at the Dec. 11, 2006, meeting and to protect one commissioner's role in a vote, a claim several county officials - from Chairman Charlie Bishop on down the line - have denied. The crux of the matter concerns who made a motion to complete the long-delayed Houston Road Project by using money allocated for other projects. Attached to that motion was a clause that pledged the commission would join the state Department of Transportation in supporting the completion of Forest Hill Road. Originally, the minutes of that meeting indicated Commissioner Elmo Richardson (Ethics Complaint) made a motion, but those minutes were changed this past summer after local activists began attacking the legitimacy of the vote and accusing Richardson of various conflicts of interest. Richardson contacted county staffers and informed them he didn't attend the December meeting - a claim that has since been backed up by numerous other county officials who were there. The staffers, after reviewing their notes of the meeting, changed the minutes to reflect Richardson's recollection, saying they made a mistake and that the commissioner was right about his attendance. Skeptics, most of whom are affiliated with CAUTION Macon or other similar roads and environmental watchdog groups, immediately challenged the county to produce the audio tapes of the meeting to confirm what really happened. The county's response: The tapes no longer exist. Asked about the county's policies concerning the tapes, which staffers sometimes - but not always - use to record meetings, County Attorney Virgil Adams said this week that the county's policy is "not to keep them in perpetuity." In other words, after the minutes have been written down, the tapes are usually erased and used again. So who actually made the motion? According to the new set of minutes, it was Commissioner Joe Allen, the man who has lately championed the opposition's stop-the-project viewpoint. "Well, if I did it, I did it," Allen said this week. |
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Taped Minutes are Lost
in the "roaring sound" of Burning Tapes and Smoke |
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10/19/07
To: Robert Reichert, Nancy White, Rick Hutto, Lauren
Benedict, Lonzy Edwards, Joe Allen, Jim Marshall, local/state/national
press et al
From: Victor Jones
Everyone who thinks it's way past time for Bibb County,
Georgia to quit making excuses and update their meeting recording
technology raise your hand. At least two City Council Members requested
that minutes be kept at the 10/12/07 meeting. I guess Mrs
Ross and Commissioner Bishop spit in the Council Members and FHR
Neighbors faces, once again. The meeting lasted close to two hours.
Crusher Bishop just needs to declare that Bibb County is his
personal Kingdom/Playground and shut all citzen input down. Oh, wait,
he's already done that... "Watergate, Bibb County Style," Chapter Two..
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:47:21 -0400
Dear Victor:
Steve Layson forwarded me your open records request.
I did attend the meeting on Friday, October 12th but did not
take hand written notes and only relied on an old recorder that I
brought with me to this office. I do not have a digital recorder that
downloads.
After the
meeting, I tried to listen to the tape and only had a roaring sound so unfortunately
there is no audio recording of the meeting.
I have attached the notes.
Janice
NotesfrommeetingwithCitycouncilmembersandRobertReichert-doc
contents in text format:
DATE Friday, October 12,
2007
TIME 10:00 A.M.
SUBJECT Forest Hill Road
PRESENT Chairman Charles
Bishop
City Councilman Rick Hutton
City Councilwoman Nancy
White
Lauren Benedict
Robert Reichert
Ken Sheets, County Engineer
Ken Sheets began the
meeting by reviewing the history of the Forest Hill Road Project.
Mr. Reichert thanked Mr.
Sheets and the Chairman for having the meeting. He now has a better
understanding of the Project. He stated he understood that the DOT has
made concessions for this project and now is ready to move on it.
Janice S. "Roaring Sounds" Ross
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| Elmo's
votes on self-serving projects: Dr. Holliday, sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I left the office around 10:00 this morning and hadn’t been long returned. To answer your questions regarding the details of the minutes of December 11, 2006, here is my honest account:
Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:13:31 -0400 Subject: Re: Open Records Request - Audio file of 12-11-06 Commission  Don't Tell Anyone.... |
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SKW raises an interesting point - storage of audio
recordings of our Bibb Com meetings. SKW states that "it would
take a warehouse" to archive their meetings.
Actually, No, it would not. Sheila Thurmond uses a Olympus Digital Voice Recorder Series IC recorder. The compression is 000.1MB per minute. Thus my 4GB USB "thumbdrive" on my keychain can hold 40,000 minutes of Bibb Discussions. This equals 667 hours in my pocket keychain. Comparisons: 6,000 minutes = 10 hours of Bibb Meetings on any one audio CD 45 hours on a DVD. 4,000 hours on a new 400GB HardDrive inside Ms Thurmonds desktop PC. This is 160 DAYS at 24 hours a day of Bibb Commissioners "hot-air"
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| Subject:
RE: Open Records Request - Audio file of 12-11-06
Commission Meeting Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:30:25 -0400 From: "Shelia Thurmond" <sthurmond@co.bibb.ga.us> To: "Holliday Dental" <teeth@mindspring.com> Cc: "Virgil Adams" <vadams@ajtlaw.com> Dr.
Holliday, following is my response to your most recent open records
request: Number
One – There is
no such room full of tapes. Number
Two – County
records are maintained according to the Retention Schedules for Local
Government. The Schedules can be reviewed online at www.georgiaarchives.org To help navigate you to where you want to go,
please do the following: Click on “Who are we” – then Click on “Records
and Information Management Services” – then Click on “retention
schedules” and finally, Click on “Georgia Retention Schedules for Local
Government Records”. Clerk
of the Board (478)
621-6540 |
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back to Forest Hill Road |
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- CAUTION Macon - |
