Transparency matters with issues as contentious as the homeless shelter’s move down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. An outreach committee seeking to increase communication between opponents and supporters of this move took a step in the right direction by taking the town council’s recommendation of adding members. But numbers alone won’t make this committee as open as it should be.
The Good Neighbor Plan Advisory Committee can take this crucial next step by electronically recording its meetings, just as the town council and Board of County Commissioners do. This step will further fulfill the group’s founding principle of allowing residents to work within, rather than outside, the process.
It was upon this principle that Mark Peters based his push to have meetings electronically recorded. Peters, an outspoken opponent of the shelter’s move north, ultimately refused a seat on the committee because it refused to meet this request.
In response to Peters’ refusal, Chris Moran, executive director of the Inter-Faith Council, which oversees the shelter, said, “It’s better to be a part of something and contribute to it, than to be outside of the process.”
But in refusing to record meetings for the public at large to hear, Moran is actually falling short of including as many people as possible. His argument stands to leave out members of the community who cannot attend the meetings.
Operating under the IFC, a non-governmental service group, this committee is not beholden to N.C. public records law. But the committee would not exist if not for the town council’s mandate.
The committee’s 22 members should see that mandate as an obligation to hold it to the same transparency standards and open it to as many residents as possible. While the committee does provide written notes on its website, these notes fall short of telling the full story. They can’t show the emotion behind the arguments that would provide a more comprehensive glimpse into the discussion. Most of all, they don’t provide a verbatim account, as an electronic recording would.
The committee was founded to draw on many opinions. The full story of all those opinions must be heard.
