Parents’ strong turnout and keen personal interest in recent school board meetings over school zoning changes — at Normal Park, East Hamilton Middle/High and Ooltewah High School and their feeder schools — will likely be demonstrated again at either the Mar. 15 or Apr. 19 school board meetings on the subject. That’s just one example of how deep public interest is in school board affairs. It is also why County Commission members finally should agree at their meeting Wednesday to hold public interviews of candidates interested in filling the seat of retiring school board member Everett Fairchild — and any other appointments of public officials in the future.
What’s at stake is simply the public interest, and the commission’s commitment — if there is any — to public transparency in how and why county commissioners make their decisions on the public’s business.
Public transparency for the commission’s business should be elemental. Yet for years, members of the County Commission have arrogantly used private interviews to determine whom they support for the vacancies they fill.
Last week, for example, the commissioners agreed — without any public discussion — to appoint David Norton, a long-time assistant county attorney, to the vacancy on Sessions Court. The commissioners had privately and separately interviewed the 10 applicants for the interim appointment to the judgeship left vacant by the death of Judge Bob Moon. They made their appointment of Norton on a 7-1 vote without any public discussion of the merits of the candidates.
The commissioners may never admit that they talked to each other privately, in violation of the Sunshine Law, to come to their nearly unanimous agreement. But there is no other plausible explanation for how they arrived at their near total consensus. Miracle mind readers they are not.