Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors (1/4/16)

SouthsideCentral will be covering at least the first monthly meeting of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors, so let’s see what happened at the reorganizational meeting on Monday night.

There’s no wi-fi in the Pittsylvania County General District courtroom when the board meets and cell coverage is pretty spotty, so LIVE! coverage is difficult. We’re trying to find a way around that, though.

Tonight’s meeting will be the election of a new chairman and vice-chairman, then the appointments to the standing committees. There’s no real county business on the agenda. We’re here at the meeting room at 6:05 PM and have made it through the metal detector station. I’m semi-surprised to see somebody in the room, but it’s Brenda Bowman! Her brother was sworn in as a new school board member at their meeting so she stopped by there first. I’m obliged to make the “Um, you’re not on the board anymore, you know.” joke. Heh. It’s just us two in the room, so I look around.

Don’t push the red button.

County Administrator Clarence Monday will start the meeting. He’ll conduct the election for chairman then head back to his seat.

The nameplates are ready.

Unlike Danville City Council that does seating assignments by random draw, the board of supervisors sit where they want to with seniority being the tiebreaker if two people want the same seat.

We’re still about 40 minutes before the meeting starts and Jessie Barksdale is the first to arrive. He goes ahead and fixes the nameplates.

Jessie Barksdale takes on the task. Tim Barber makes absolutely no eye contact with me as he heads up to his seat.

Coy Harville is stubborn to get out and Jessie Barksdale accidentally breaks him in half. NO! I mean Coy Harville’s nameplate is stubborn to get out and Jessie Barksdale accidentally breaks his nameplate in half. Of course the first sentence could have been theoretaically true as well. Heh.

Take that, Coy Harville!

More people start arriving for the meeting…

Brenda Bowman & Will Pace talk to incoming supervisor Joe Davis

Everybody has picked their seats for the year, so let’s see what we have.

On the left side as the audience sees the board, we have Bob Warren, Jessie Barksdale, Joe Davis, and Ron Scearce.

And on the right, we have Elton Blackstock, Jerry Hagerman and Tim Barber.

One of these seven contestants will move to the chairman’s seat after the election, and that’s about twenty minutes away. Oops, we forgot the person that keeps score of the game…

The one, the only… Rebecca Flippen! You might ask “Why does Rebecca sit up there when she needs to be able to count all of the hands on a vote?” That’s a very good question that nobody has a real answer to.

And here’s the man in charge of Pittsylvania County for the next 10 minutes, the County Administrator, the star of the show…

Clarence Monday!  He’s looking too damned happy here, isn’t he?

I remind Clarence Monday that he is in charge and he could do a lot of things with executive orders, but he just won’t go along with that idea. Damn. All righty, it’s 7:00 PM. Let’s get to what little business we have to do.

Clarence Monday leads the Pledge of Allegiance and the moment of silence, then asks if anything needs to be added to the agenda. Jessie Barksdale asks to move a few appointments to the “new business” part of the agenda because they need to be voted on tonight. Everybody agrees (for probably the last time tonight). Monday takes nominations for board chairman and Jessie Barksdale & Tim Barber are nominated and seconded.

It’s vote time. Jessie Barksdale gets the affirmative votes from himself, Bob Warren, Elton Blackstock & Joe Davis. Tim Barber, Jerry Hagerman and Ron Scearce vote “No”, but it’s 4-3 and Jessie Barksdale is the new chairman of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors.

Jessie Barksdale takes the chairman seat and Clarence Monday has lost his temporary power. Heh.

New Chairman Jessie Barksdale takes his seat. Elton Blackstock is actually way happier than he looks in this photo.

Barksdale takes nominations for vice-chairman and we get Elton Blackstock & Jerry Hagerman nominated. It’s time for the vote and Elton Blackstock gets himself, Barksdale, Warren & Davis for the “Yes”. Barber, Hagerman & Scearce vote “No” but that means Elton Blackstock retains his vice-chairmanship.

We move to the official adoption of the bylaws which should be a 7-0 nothing but OH HELL NO, Barber, Hagerman & Scearce even vote “No” against the bylaws. I’m going to lock them all up in a room and make them order a pizza that everybody will eat a slice from. No, they’d die of starvation first. GAH! Now we adopt Robert’s Rules of Order and it’s a miracle! That’s a 7-0 vote. We move on to Chairman Barksdale naming this year’s committees. I’ll get the official list soon, but here’s the way to quickly recap it.

Team Barksdale gets all the good & important committees. Team Barber gets the crap stuff. The. End.

We move to the public comment section and Richard Shumate is the only person signed up to speak.

He talks about the county having a lot of surplus cars and right when his light turns yellow, he decides to have a prayer.

One minute left. Let’s PRAY!

A few more board appointments and we’re done!

Let’s take tonight’s final look at the 2016 Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors…

And there you have it, folks. This is the most comprehensive recap of Monday’s Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors meeting that any media source will bring you, and we’ve got the most photos! We’ll be covering more of these meetings (at least monthly).

Thanks for reading SouthsideCentral!