Since CCEC has stopped providing their summaries of Commissioner activities, we will take on the task. We are Chatham Citizens Searching for Honest Progressives.

Let’s compare the words to the deeds of our dear leaders.

“We will be a county where people have input and are able to make decisions about their community. That takes time, encouragement, and open conversation” – Diana Hales

 “We will be the kind of leaders people know because we are out in public, engaging, listening, and responding to your needs and reflecting that in our decisions.” – Karen Howard

“We are dedicated to open and inclusive government. In our deliberations we seek counsel and advice of all people. Everyone’s concern shall have a full hearing.” - Jim Crawford

Sadly, their first act was to cancel scheduled meetings throughout the county to hear from residents about how their community should be zoned. 100 people attended the BOC meetings, petitions were signed by 300 more, others mailed hundreds of post cards all pleading to be heard. The commissioners refused to reschedule the community meetings. Even worse, they tried to implement county wide zoning in just a couple of months, ensuring no input from landowners. We knew commissioner Hales was not afraid to make things up to get her point made, (remember her lie about personally hearing Commissioner Bock say he wouldn’t appoint someone to the planning board because she was an artist) but hoped this tenuous relationship with honesty didn’t extend to the majority of commissioners.

 Moving on to another sentiment expressed by our progressive commissioners.

 “Unlike the republicans we will not suppress public input by packing so many topics onto the consent agenda (the part of the agenda that gets voted on as block with no discussion from commissioners or the public)” – Karen Howard

These progressives love the expediency of the consent agenda more than their predecessors. From January through June there were 124 issues on the regular agenda. Of those, 109 were on the consent agenda. Remove the ceremonial items and we’re left with less than 10 discussion topics in 6 months. For this they tried to give themselves a raise by insisting on additional BOC meetings. (I’m told they “earn” an additional $150 for each meeting)

 Humbly submitted by Paul Revere, Chatham Citizens seeking Honest Progressives