Today, after months of Zooming into the Grafton County Commissioners’ Meetings, I learned that the link to the meetings was shut down by a directive of the ‘Chairman of the Board,’ who, I believe, is Martha McLeod.
According to the website, “…at the direction of the ‘Chairman of the Board,’ there is no longer virtual participation for Commissioner meetings.” Isn’t this something that is done in Communist countries? We certainly don’t do this in the USA, and definitely not in the state of New Hampshire, whose motto is “…Live Free or Die!”
Perhaps we should change our motto to “Die! Die! Die!”
Some Grafton County residents cannot physically attend these meetings due to medical or physical reasons, or due to great distances traveling to North Haverhill from all corners of Grafton County, which is 500 square miles bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
This is an outrageous abuse of power exerted by the ‘chairman of the board,’ and if this action was taken by a vote of the group of 3 Commissioners, they should be recalled or removed from their positions.
It is illogical for these 3 Commissioners and members of the Grafton County Delegation to have approved, and spent millions of dollars of taxpayer monies in the form of ARPA grants to install cable lines throughout the county so residents could be connected to the outside world which includes the Grafton County Commissioners’ Meetings only to have the ‘chairman of the board’ and/or the Commissioners arbitrarily curtail online participation!
It is my belief, after all these months of dutiful participation, that more legislative oversight is needed to curtail the runaway power of Commissioners and the ‘Chairman of the Board.’
Authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers. Submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com
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