The Hamilton County Board of Commissioners voted to make their meetings fully-online during their Wednesday morning meeting, which was the first held partially in-person since March. The resolution read as follows:
“A resolution establishing all forthcoming meetings at the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners held during the outbreak and spread of the pandemic of coronavirus COVID-19 shall continue to be held virtually until the governor of the state of Tennessee completely unconditionally lifts his executive order allowing virtual meetings by local legislative bodies.”
Commissioner Greg Martin asked County Attorney Rheubin Taylor if the resolution also precluded commissioners from meeting in-person, as they were that morning. The attorney said hybrid meetings would no longer happen if the resolution passed.
“This motion calls for exclusively video and not hybrid,” the attorney said. “You would only be meeting by virtual.”
“So if we passed this resolution, it would be inappropriate for anyone to meet in these chambers and meet face to face with anyone who would desire to do that,” Commissioner Martin asked, saying the resolution went beyond what the governor laid out in his order.
“The governor has not forced us to meet virtually, he’s allowed us to,” Commissioner Martin said. “But if we pass this resolution, then the County Commission cannot meet in the chambers. No hybrid.”
The attorney said Commissioner Martin was correct. He also said any other meeting, such as finance or zoning, should also be held virtually as well. Commissioner Warren Mackey said he was in favor of the resolution, citing the continued prevalence of the virus.
“It’s dangerous out here, and I’m struggling to understand the logic of wanting to run out into that building to be exposed (to the virus) when we don’t have to,” Commissioner Mackey said.
Commissioners Katherlyn Geter, Martin, David Sharpe, and Chairman Chip Baker all voted in opposition of the resolution. Attorney Taylor said the rest of the day’s meeting should still be held in person. That concluded the recessed meeting.
Toward the end of the regular meeting, County Mayor Jim Coppinger addressed the Commission about COVID-19. He said numbers are “trending in the right direction,” but asked his constituents to remain cautious when out and about.
“We do have a press conference scheduled for next Tuesday at noon at the Health Department, and I ask for all of you to join,” mayor Coppinger said. “We’ll be discussing a number of things, and we’ll have some special guests to lay some of the reasoning out.”
“I’m really proud of the people in the community with different advisory boards and task forces, and the governor’s task force for giving us a lot of input and to be able to hear a lot of different points of view to make a decision. But I don’t want anybody in our community to let their guard down.”
“Sometimes these issues get politicized, and that’s not helping the 95 fatalities we’ve had and over 8,000 who have tested positive. And we don’t know the long-term effects. I wish people were privy to sit in the meetings I have with physicians from different areas, and the one thing we don’t know is once you have the virus and it goes away, what are the lasting effects?”
The mayor said a vaccine will help “a lot,” but he said such a vaccine will not be available for several months.
“There will be a time when we’re not wearing masks and when things are back to normal. But in the meantime, please respect the virus.”
He said the county is starting to see what he called a “lack of cooperation” in regard to people who have had the virus and refuse to go along with contact tracing.
The County Commission also heard about a resolution to amend the general fund expenditures budget for the EMS department by $721,000 from previously unbudgeted funds, in order to allow EMS to facilitate a change in workforce schedule.
“We had anticipated waiting till January to bring this resolution up, but there have been changes to the workplace,” Lee Norris said. “We just had a county in Georgia elect to have Memorial provide their ambulance service, and Memorial can pay more than we can. We’re trying to get a leg up on the competition before they come in and hire our best people away from us.”
He said EMS is already down six people since August, and he said that with this budget amendment, he believes “we stand a good chance of keeping our good employees and hiring even more.”