The Bulloch County Board of Commissioners, split 3-3 but with Chairman Roy Thompson casting the tiebreaker vote, halted a 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 25, special meeting that had been called for the purpose of approving two agreements with Bryan County having to do with wells, water and wastewater.

One of the agreements is the memorandum of understanding, or MOU, to establish the mitigation program for other well owners whose water level may be impacted by the counties’ providing four large wells to supply water to Hyundai Motor Group’s Metaplant America. The other is a proposed intergovernmental agreement, or IGA, between Bulloch and Bryan counties for operation of county-owned water and sewer systems, also in southeastern Bulloch and northern Bryan.

The called meeting was halted, without any action being taken on the agreements, after complaints were voiced, especially by the Ogeechee Riverkeeper organization, that public notice issued a little over 24 hours before the meeting gave members of the public insufficient time to know the contents of the agreements.

The originally posted and printed agenda would have placed the public comments portion of the meeting after the motions and votes on the agreements, which had also drawn complaints prior to the meeting. But County Manager Tom Couch remedied this at the start, recommending a change in the agenda to place the public comment period first and also – for reasons less obvious – to rotate the order in which the MOU and IGA might be taken up for motions and votes. Commissioners approves the agenda revision 6-0.

Eight people had signed up to make comments.

Ben Kirsch, legal director for Ogeechee Riverkeeper, was the second person to speak to the commissioners from the public microphone.

“Our first kind of concern is how quickly this meeting has happened,” Kirsch said. “Twenty-four hours notice is not enough time to process all of this information and provide any sort of useful feedback. … You don’t give us an opportunity to have a say in this, and that kind of continues the trend around this whole project.”

He added, “The notice was not in its normal places.”

Kirsch went on to express some wishes and concerns in regard to the agreements, but returned to the theme of insufficient notice.

Thompson then asked, “How many of y’all did not receive or see a notice in the notice in the normal places that you would normally see it, on our website, the newspaper, wherever?”

A few people responded on this. The Statesboro Herald reporter said that he had seen an email from Kirsch first, on Tuesday, and then looking back saw that he – the Herald reporter – had received an emailed notice from the county at 4:12 p.m. Monday.

In fact, the Ogeechee Riverkeeper’s email about the meeting had been sent by the organization’s communications and administrative director, Meaghan Gerard, also expressing concern about the timing.

The 4:12 p.m. Monday email to the reporter from Clerk of the Board Mincey-White carried the agenda and documents as an attachment. Another Herald staff member had also received a county notice, and the special meeting and its time – but not its subject matter – was in fact listed in a community calendar in the Herald’s Tuesday e-Edition (published Monday night).

The county has a legal obligation to send a notice to the legal organ at least 24 hours prior to a called meeting, and that obligation was met.

“I’m hearing that it did go out on a normal delivery email, but we don’t want anybody slighted as far as us trying to rush a meeting on anyone,” Thompson said to the audience.

He asked for a motion to cancel, or he said “close” the meeting, which he said would be rescheduled at a later date.

Commissioner Toby Conner made the motion to, in effect, adjourn the meeting. Commissioner Jappy Stringer seconded, and Commissioner Ray Mosely joined in the “yes” vote. But Commissioners Curt Deal, Anthony Simmons and Timmy Rushing voted “no.”