As you have heard by now on Supertalk and News MS, at Tuesday night’s meeting of the board of Mayor and Selectman of McComb, Selectman Donovan Hill spoke up as soon as the opening prayer had concluded, adding two items to the agenda…items which had been voted on in the past and failed, but were passed by identical 3-1 votes Tuesday night when Selectmen Michael Cameron and Tommy McKenzie were late to the meeting.
Cameron and McKenzie had previously voted against removing the state flag from city buildings, and had also voted against moving forward on rebuilding the MLK Gymnasium.
Here is the unedited audio of the first 7:43 of the meeting, where you can hear the items being added to the agenda with no advance notice, and then moved to the start of the agenda so the vote would take place before the two tardy selectmen could arrive in order to force the vote before the supporters of the motions lost their majority.
[waveplayer ids=”75061″]
There has been outrage expressed at the move as Selectman Hill, who made the motions, has not only been late to several meetings, but missed a recent meeting in its entirety with no contentious items added to the agenda during his absences.
To be clear, these two items were not on the agenda Tuesday night, nor was there any advance notice to any of the board or citizens that they would be discussed, much less voted on.
Of course, the tone for the meeting was set during the opening prayer, conducted by McComb Mayor Whitney Rawlings, was ignored by some members of the board, to the extent of being interrupted by a soft drink can being opened.
This was the opening prayer Tuesday night (From left to right around the table are Albert Eubanks, Whitney Rawlings, Kelvin Butler and Donovan Hill, with Ronnie Brock partially on-camera to the far right, and Ted Tullos just off-camera on the far left):
One thing is clear…the next meeting of the board in McComb will be interesting. The next regularly-scheduled meeting is Tuesday, June 27th at 5:30 at city hall.
Related: Controversial vote leads to state flag removal in McComb
