{"id":10171,"date":"2014-09-03T01:17:43","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T05:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=10171"},"modified":"2014-09-03T01:17:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T05:17:43","slug":"my-speech-to-danville-city-council-on-922014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/09\/03\/my-speech-to-danville-city-council-on-922014\/","title":{"rendered":"My speech to Danville City Council on 9\/2\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

As promised, here’s the speech that I made to City Council during the public comment section on Tuesday, September 2nd. Two members of city council met and discussed business with two members of the school board in a way that the public nor media had to be notified in advance. This meeting was not in violation of state law, but I felt that the spirit of the Open Meetings law was violated.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Greetings,<\/p>\n

I have discovered that on Wednesday, August 6th, Mayor Sherman Saunders, Vice-Mayor Gary Miller and City Manager Joe King met with School Board Chairman Ed Polhamus, Vice Chair Terri Hall and acting superintendent Kathy Osborne to talk about school system updates, plans, budget and projections. Although this meeting did not violate Open Meeting laws because only 2 members of 2 different elected boards met, I feel that this was an skirting of Virginia’s open meeting laws. At council’s work session the next evening, Mayor Saunders distributed a package for each Council member from the school board.<\/p>\n

I ask that package be put into the public record and minutes for that work session so that the public has full access to what it contains. I especially make this request because the public was not informed about this meeting ahead of time, even as a courtesy.<\/p>\n

In the future, should council and the school board want to do this 2-and-2 type of meeting, I urge that both boards clearly advertise the date, time and location of this meeting so that the citizens can attend and the media can cover it. Transparency is the key to trust in your elected offices. Behavior shown on August 6th is not conducive to public trust.<\/p>\n

I also suggest that if council delegates 2 representatives for such a meeting, that those two members be ones who have actually attended school board meetings in the past few months. Thank you for your time, and I stand ready to answer any questions from Council or to hear your comments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There you go!<\/p>\n

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As promised, here’s the speech that I made to City Council during the public comment section on Tuesday, September 2nd. Two members of city council met and discussed business with two members of the school board in a way that the public nor media had to be notified in advance. This meeting was not in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58,20,22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-danville","category-newscentral","category-opinioncentral","category-politicscentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-2E3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":32187,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/02\/lee-voglers-nomination-speech-for-alonzo-jones\/","url_meta":{"origin":10171,"position":0},"title":"Lee Vogler’s Nomination Speech for Alonzo Jones","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"On Friday, Lee Vogler nominated Alonzo Jones to be the new vice mayor of Danville. SouthsideCentral is glad to publish that nomination speech unedited for you to read. Again, this speech is from Lee Vogler as he nominated Alonzo Jones for Vice Mayor. Fellow Council Members: I am nominating Councilman\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "YouCentral"","block_context":{"text":"YouCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/youcentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/aYuclKg.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9147,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/01\/danville-city-council-organizational-meeting-live\/","url_meta":{"origin":10171,"position":1},"title":"Danville City Council Organizational Meeting LIVE!","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Who'll be the mayor of Danville for next two years? Who'll be the vice-mayor? Most importantly of all, where will everybody sit? All of these answers are coming to you LIVE! today. The meeting starts at noon, and SouthsideCentral starts our coverage earlier than that. Refresh the page for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"image","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/wpid-wp-1404232043355.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/wpid-wp-1404232043355.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/wpid-wp-1404232043355.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/wpid-wp-1404232043355.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":32184,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/01\/sherman-saunders-farewell-as-mayor-speech\/","url_meta":{"origin":10171,"position":2},"title":"Sherman Saunders’ “Farewell as Mayor” Speech","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"At Friday's Danville City Council organizational meeting, John Gilstrap was elected as mayor. Sherman Saunders' 8-year run as mayor came to an end, and he made a speech during the around the horn section. SouthsideCentral is glad to publish Saunders' speech in its entirety so that you can read it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "YouCentral"","block_context":{"text":"YouCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/youcentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/5RNe6IX.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12319,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/04\/07\/my-speech-to-danville-city-council-4715\/","url_meta":{"origin":10171,"position":3},"title":"My Speech to Danville City Council (4\/7\/15)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As promised, here is my speech that I made at Tuesday night's Danville City Council meeting. Greetings, I come before City Council tonight to express my opinion on the current water taste issue. I believe that the City of Danville has badly mismanaged this issue and as a result, has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11989,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/09\/strong-but-wrong\/","url_meta":{"origin":10171,"position":4},"title":"OpinionCentral: Strong, But Wrong.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"February 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Danville Register & Bee published a strongly worded editorial in Sunday's newspaper, but they missed the target. Our leaders need to take ijob (sic) creation seriously (Register & Bee article, paywall may apply unless you break through it) Let's analyze some parts of the editorial that they got wrong...\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7393,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2011\/11\/16\/some-thoughts-about-tonights-danville-city-council-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":10171,"position":5},"title":"Some thoughts about tonight’s Danville City Council meeting…","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"November 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It was good to get back into swing of things and attend a Danville City Council meeting in person. Here's some Random Thoughts about it... (Editor's Note: This is about the Tuesday, November 15th meeting) I'm going to start it off by saying that the current mix of City Council\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10173,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10171\/revisions\/10173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}