Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call the Jackson County Board of Commissioners study session for June 2nd to order. Madam Clerk, could you call the roll, please?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Behr.

Present.

Commissioner Walz.

Here.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Here.

Commissioner Duckham. Commissioner Pulaski. Here. Commissioner Willis.

Here.

Commissioner Williams. Present. Commissioner Snow. Here. Chairman Chatwell.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. We've arrived at public comment. Public comment guidelines. Each individual will state their name, have three minutes to address the board. Subject matter must pertain to the items on the agenda. You may only address the board once under this public comment opportunity and may not yield your time to others. Board members will not debate or answer questions at this time. Seeing no public, we move on to the minutes of the previous study session. I have a motion and support. Questions? All in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Duly carried. Item five, the Administrator Controller's Office on the Community Development Block Grant Public Hearing. Do you want a motion to begin with, Michael? Okay, entertain a motion to start the public hearing, please.

So moved.

I have a motion in support. Madam Clerk, are you ready to call the roll?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Walz. Yes. Commissioner Kennedy. Yes. Commissioner Valesky. Yes. Commissioner Willis. Yes. Commissioner Williams. Yes. Commissioner Snow.

Yes.

Commissioner Behr. Yes. Chairman Chatwell. Yes. Motion passes.

Michael Overton.

Apparently, there's no public for the public hearing. Deborah, would you give the board a little overview?

This is the CDBG grant for approximately 400,000 for purposes of rehabbing urgent needs of low to moderate income homes. That does not include the administrative fees, so it's a little bit more than 400,000. And we have submitted our intent to apply. We've received information back from CDBG. I think it's MEDC that's actually monitoring it. So we've been in communication with the office and the public hearing is required as part of the process to get grant approval. Once the public hearing is completed, we can move forward with submitting all the rest of our documents for our formal application.

Questions or comments? Questions or comments? Commissioner Behr.

Thank you, Chairman. um for those that might be watching this on video thank you deborah we had a short conversation before the meeting and on page eight my thoughts my concerns deborah cleared it up was that this if this gets approval today it will not be sent out today or tomorrow it'll be at least a month because we have to send with it the meeting minutes of this meeting. And the minutes of this meeting won't be approved until the July study session. So we have to wait until then, and there's other documents that have to be submitted also. So Deb, I appreciate your explaining that with me earlier. My other comment is on the Community Development Block Grant application and on the supplement. Down at the bottom of every page it says revised November 21, 2025. That's not the correct date of the last revision. They were revised in May 2026. So I would just ask that we get that date I think that's their form. I smell the comments. Thank you.

Any other commissioner comments? Last chance for public comment. Entertain a motion. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. My question to the administrators, with this being a community development block grant, for my constituents that reside in the city, do they qualify to apply for this?

No. The city is an entitlement city, so they already get these CDGB funds automatically. I believe they have somebody internally that handles it. I don't recall the Lisa maybe. It used to be a Lisa.

Corey. I was thinking it was Corey Mays.

Okay. And so they used to have a person that specifically handled their grants, and so they get separate monies. So they should have a similar or same program, but they're an entitlement city, so they automatically get it.

I think it's an awesome program. I just want to be clear about that for our constituents that reside in the city.

Thank you. Any further comments? Entertain a motion to close the public hearing? We have a motion in support to close the public hearing. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Duly carried. We have arrived at item 5B. Michael Overton.

This is an FOIA appeal. This is this individual's second attempt of seeking documents. The first one was denied by advice of counsel, legal attorney. And this one here is being denied because the document she asked for does not exist. I've talked to the prosecutor about it. it doesn't exist by name or by idea of what she's asking for. So I have no choice but to deny the FOIA request.

So the motion would be to confirm the denial. I have a support. I'll make the motion. Comments? Commissioner Behr. Item 5B, the FOIA appeal. That's all done.

Right.

Correct.

What's that?

We did that last month. You've already done that. This is the public hearing. That's what we did. That's what we...

And we have a motion on the floor.

We have a motion on the floor at this time dealing with the FOIA. We'll go back to the public hearing question in a moment, sir.

Okay. On the FOIA, I have a question on that. Go ahead. The June 2 for our agenda today, the FOIA request. It was denied because no record of this name was found. There are several names here. Which name was never found?

Mike, go ahead and answer them, please.

None of them. We don't have any records that she's asking for. I'm sorry. Let me put my hearing on.

Neither.

None of the names were listed. There's no existence of any of this document, and there's no names, so we have to deny the FOIA request.

Okay, comparing the May 19 FOIA request, comparing that to this June 2 FOIA request, both of these requests are relative to the murder of the same individual. The FOIA request that we upheld the denial on May 19 was for information about, I don't know if I should say their names, but about a certain defendant that was being charged with murder. Now it appears, comparing these two FOIA requests, there was a second defendant also charged with some implication in the same murder. So if somebody looks back and they can't find a name, how is that possible when it certainly appears that the name of this individual was also charged or implicated with a murder.

She's she's actually, she's asking, if you look at it, I would like to request a copy of the proffer of this person. Yes. And no such document exists.

No proffer exists.

Yeah. And then in, in section B down there under the background part there, It says, uh, let's see, uh, our County and prosecuting attorney has advised that no record with this name or description exists at by, uh, under advisement prosecutor, uh, no record makes this. So we have to deny.

Okay. So. Could you define for me what does the legal term proffer mean? What is that?

Commissioner Behr, this is questions that you should have with the prosecutor's office. We're here to either deny or confirm the FOIA request. And I would like to move forward if we could, please. And you can ask these questions at a later time and get yourself educated on this stuff.

That would be absolutely pointless. You just want to send me another worthless goose chase.

Tony, a proffer's an offer, Tony, an official offer in legal terminology. That's what a proffer is. And they're saying it doesn't exist. There isn't one.

Can't give her something that doesn't exist.

Neither are we required to create a document.

No.

Okay, well, if no proffer existed, where did this lady get the idea that some paper- That's a conversation for you to have with the constituent.

That's not a conversation for us to have. We don't need to get into the theory behind her thoughts.

We're here to give her- In order to feel comfortable that the proper research was completed.

Well, then I would recommend having a conversation either with Michael Overton or the prosecutor.

Well, the way these agendas are put out to us and the first batch of documents that were sent to us on Friday made it impossible to talk to Mike or the prosecutor or anybody. And based on my inquiry, the correct document was sent out yesterday afternoon. So that again did not leave me a lot of time to talk to the prosecutor or to Mike. And so you talk about these opportunities to talk to these people, but that's fiction. this stuff comes out so late that no, what you were saying I should do can't be done. So that's.

Commissioner Behr, I have a point of order from Commissioner Snell. I'm gonna call the vote.

That's not what a point of order means.

All in favor of denying.

That's not what a point of order means. My point of order is that.

Those opposed.

That's not relevant to the question at hand.

Now, Commissioner Behr, you wanted to go back to the Administrator Comote Comptroller's Community Development Block Grant. You had questions on that. We just finished that. We all voted in favor, and you did not respond. I didn't even hear it called upon.

Nothing was posted. My response is no.

Commissioner Behr, we've moved on to the community development question. Do you have questions for that, sir? Commissioner Behr. What do you want? I'd like you to ask your question about the administrator controller's community development block grant question you said you had. Put your hearing aids on. My microphone is on, sir.

I asked my two questions and I said.

Could you please repeat your Community Block Grant question?

You are relying on a vote of last month to say that we approve this grant. But yet in today's document, on today's agenda, you are requesting that we make a motion and act on it. Why do you publish a document that's requesting a vote and then never take a vote?

Make a motion to approve.

We have a motion in support to concur with the vote that we took in May. Any questions to the motion? Madam Clerk is going to have a roll call.

Okay. The motion I have is to concur with a vote taken at the board may board meeting. Is that correct? Commissioner?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. Okay. Mr. Kennedy.

Yes.

Mr. Pileski. Yes. Commissioner Willis. Yes. Commissioner Williams. Yes. Commissioner Snell.

Yes.

Commissioner bear.

Yes.

Commissioner walls. Chairman Shatwell. Yes. Motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Kennedy, for your indulgence. We've arrived at the second opportunity of public comment. Each individual will state their name. You have three minutes to openly address the board. You may only address the board once under this public comment opportunity. You may not yield your time to others. Board members will not debate or answer questions at this time. Any public comment?

Hi, David Hammontree and Hunter Block Durand in the city. Thank you all for the work you do, invigorating me. Thanks.

Seeing no other public, public comment is now closed. Do we have commissioner comments? Seeing no commissioner comments, call for a motion to adjourn. We have a motion in support. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, duly carried.