Commission to try evening meeting once a month

By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com

MOUND CITY – On Monday, July 15, after discussing whether to have some evening commission meetings, the Linn County Commissioners decided to do a trial run of having evening meetings on the fourth Monday of every month for the next three months.

The first evening meeting will be on Monday, July 29, at 5:30 p.m. 

The discussion started when Commission Chair Danny McCullough brought up the idea that had been talked about several weeks earlier. McCullough asked County Clerk David Lamb if there were any pros and cons to that. At the meeting several weeks ago, Lamb had said he had wanted to look into it.

Lamb said that at the moment, if the commission was just going to try it out, commissioners would want to at some point make a motion to reschedule whatever meeting they were talking about. Lamb said if they were going to change the whole schedule at some time a resolution should be passed to make it official.  

At the July 1 meeting, McCullough had suggested having afternoon meetings after having a work session in the mornings so the commissioners could prepare for decisions.

At that meeting Commissioner Jim Johnson said he would rather have evening meetings. Commissioner Jason Hightower said he did not see a benefit to the afternoon meetings. Lamb said he was not in favor of evening meetings.

Johnson said that the evening meeting would open up the opportunity for more people to sit in a commission seat because people that actually work a job during the day. 

“It would give people the opportunity to run for commissioner,” said Johnson.  

Hightower said that he would rather keep the meetings during the day, but he was not opposed to trying different things.