RAEFORD – Following a motion put forth at last month’s meeting to investigate tightening up the board’s public input policies due to an incident of hostile language, the board started off their Sept. 9 meeting by approving a handful of changes worked on by the county attorney.
“When you come into a meeting, you expect a certain amount of decorum and we expect the same things for our citizens,” said Vice Chair Harry Southerland. “We want every one of our citizens to feel safe. We have to do things that will take care of the whole of Hoke County. Nobody has the same opinions, but you have to have respect at the end of the day.”
The policy changes included granting the chairman the complete authority to “maintain order and decorum” during their meetings and public comment periods by allowing them the power to forfeit the remaining time of any speaker who engages in personal attacks, name calling, abusive language, threatening or disruptive language or defamatory remarks directed at specific public officials or county employees and the ability to ask anyone who willfully disrupts a meeting to leave.
However, the board also approved changes to not allow interruptions from the board to be counted against a speaker’s time limit and changing policy language to state that citizens are allowed to speak at every monthly meeting.
“What we just did was not to restrict free speech,” said Commissioner Allen Thomas. “As of 30 seconds ago, you could only speak once every three months, but now if someone has a concern, they can speak every single month. That’s not restricting free speech. … Everyone who wants to be a part of this government, you are welcomed.”
“The public input policy has not been changed since 2006,” Southerland said. “For 18 years, this board has been using the same policy. So one thing we did in our research was to view other county’s documentation. We looked at other policies but tried to make ours specific to Hoke County and also following North Carolina general statute.”
The board also granted a release to the Teen Court Program from their prior agency partner and authorized the submission of an RFP to look for a new agency to serve the program.
“It just wasn’t a good fit,” said Raeford city councilmember Jackie McLean, who spoke on the matter.
The Teen Court program is a diversion and second-chance opportunity program that helps to keep children out of the adult court system by allowing them to truly be tried by a court of their peers.
“Literally everybody that’s in the program, everyone who serves that program are teens,” McLean said. “The only adult in the program is the judge. The young people run the court, they have jury duty, they assign their peers. It’s something we say uses positive peer pressure to change negative behavior.”
The Hoke County Board of Commissioners will next meet Sept. 17.
