Listening Really Does Matter
A Saturday Morning at Beech Glen Community Center
Read on for my thoughts about the June 9 Madison County Board of Commissioners’ meeting.
As usual, I was at the June 9th Board of County Commissioner’s meeting. Having attended many (most?) of the County Commissioner meetings for the past 17+ years, I – like many people – was pretty caught off guard with the handling of the public comment portion of that meeting. And while the public comment policy had been approved in December of 2022, the precedent that had been set was to allow up to ten people to speak on an issue, each for three minutes, then at the end of the agenda any additional comments would be heard (again, for three minutes per person). To make a change so abruptly felt horribly disrespectful to those residents who came to the meeting expecting to share their individually prepared comments. Their voices were not heard. In recapping what happened to some of my Count On Connie Campaign members the following morning, one person said, “it’s their job to listen” and I couldn’t agree more. As a candidate for County Commissioner, one of my “super powers” is to listen to concerns and to listen intently to understand all sides of an issue. I may not agree with what is being said but I promise you that I will listen with an open mind.
The chair of the Board of Commissioner’s was within the policy for how the public comment period would be handled, but I think that this should have been communicated at least 24 hours prior to the meeting. Additionally, maybe the other members of the board should have cautioned him on the approach that he was taking. As I’ve been meeting with people since announcing my candidacy, I have been asked why I’m running and one of my answers is that we need a variety of voices on the Board of Commissioners. I’d like to think that if there had been some diversity on the board, there would have been some pushback to the idea of radically changing the process that had been widely accepted for many years. Other “hot topic” issues come to mind including taking control of the Health Department, the event center/noise ordinance, the asphalt plant, and the original ridge top development debate. Each of those public comment periods followed the ten people for three minutes each process.
All that being said, I want to share where I stand on the Flock Cameras (thank you for reading the above to get to hear my thoughts! I needed to write how I felt about the process before I could write about the issue at hand). I do wish that I could have heard the comments of our neighbors as that would help me to have a better understanding about how Madison County residents feel about this issue. There is a TON of stuff on social media about Flock cameras and it’s hard to sift through to know what to believe and what not to believe.
As someone who has been a Rotarian for almost two decades, I want to find ways to bring people together to solve problems. I hear Madison County residents talking about wanting to live here because they feel safe and that we have low crime rates. I believe that those low crime rates are a result of the efforts of our Sheriff Department and our Police Departments working together and having access to the tools that they need to do their jobs. Two years ago, I had a shoplifter in my gallery and I was grateful that the individual was caught due to having cameras that recorded the theft and the police used social media to identify to shoplifter.
I also hear Madison County residents sharing their concerns about the safety of their personal information and that they are afraid of how their information might be shared or used. This is where the issue gets tricky as we don’t have access (yet) to the contract between the Madison County Sheriff’s Department and the company that owns the Flock technology to see exactly what happens with personal data and what agencies might have access to it. I have submitted a public records request to get a copy of that contract when it is signed.
Two of my careers – banking and healthcare – took privacy of individual information very seriously. In banking we were taught to never share any information about customer accounts or anything to do with people’s finances. And I worked in the healthcare field when HIPAA was rolled out which included a major provision about the protection of anyone’s personal health information. Those careers were long before today’s technological advances, but I will always value protection of personal information.
I want to support those who work in law enforcement so that they will be able to continue to keep our county residents safe AND I want to ensure that our personal data is kept safe. Our community needs to look for ways to hear each other and work together to find solutions.