What Are You Hiding?

I went to city hall to do a little research and I stumbled upon several road blocks on the access road to public information. As I was standing in the hallway, on my cellphone, calling the city clerk because the records room was locked; a guy that was working off an old fine yelled through the corridor saying I had to come to the front because the record room is closed. Say what you may about Stephanie Mullings, and I have, but she knew better than to lock the records room. She talked the board into allowing her to lock her office but she did have the wherewithal to know that the public has a right to access to the records room. My first thought was, what are they trying to hide? I later discovered that the records room is now the location for executive sessions. In addition to the locked records room, the board room/court room has been locked as well. I wonder when were these changes implemented? Normally, I would just look.at the book of minutes but the last set of minutes available for public review were from February 18,2014. I asked the city clerk why the other minutes were not available and she said the Mayor has not signed them. Excuse ne!?! Once the minutes have been approved by the board, they're supposed to be available to the public within 30 days; even Stephanie knows that. But for some reason, minutes from March-July have not been put into the minute books; a clear violation. I guess they'll say the minutes are missing. Even if the minutes were not signed by the Mayor, they should be in the book, available to the public.

The board has made a lot of decisions in the past months and the fact that the minutes are not available for review leads me to believe that the things said in executive session does not match what is being told to the generallpublic. Why all this secrecy regarding executive session? Nothing said in executive session is private other than a person's social security number and mental status. This group of aldermen are using executive session to buffertheir true agenda; that's why they moved the location across the hall and we have no way of knowing who's throwing their rocks and hiding their hands because we cannot review the minutes. What are they afraid of? Do they think we have bionic ears? I am a firm believer that I will not say anything that I can't repeat and the board of aldermen should not vote privately for anything they can't support publicly. I guess I've ranted enough for today butbbefore I go help me to understand this little math equation. WastePro will start collecting garbage for LumbertonIin August of this year. WastePro won the bid by quoting $10.75/household but the City of Lumberton will continue to charge $13.25/household for garbage collection (check your water bill). They said they were outsourcing garbage collection to save money. So why are the savings not getting passed along to the residents of Lumberton? Also, what about the businesses and churches that have dumpsters? How will this change effect their services? This board makes knee jerk decisions but they never think about the downsides of their decisions. It's probably a result of spending so much time and effort in making sure the citizens they represent don't know what they're doing/saying in executive session.