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APPROVED 5/4/2004 MINUTES <br />ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br />REGULAR MEETING <br />March 4, 2004 <br />The Orange County Board of Commissioners met in regular session on Thursday, March 4, <br />2004 at 7:30 p.m. in the F. Gordon Battle Courtroom in Hillsborough, North Carolina. <br />COUNTY COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Chair Barry Jacobs, and Commissioners <br />Margaret Brown, Moses Carey, Jr., Alice M. Gordon, <br />COUNTY COMMISSIONERS ABSENT: Stephen Halkiotis <br />COUNTY ATTORNEYS PRESENT: Geoffrey Gledhill and S. Sean Borhanian <br />COUNTY STAFF PRESENT: County Manager John M. Link, Jr., Assistant County <br />Managers Rod Visser and Gwen Harvey, and Clerk to the Board Donna S. Baker {All other staff <br />members will be identified appropriately below} <br />NOTE: ALL DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO IN THESE MINUTES ARE IN THE PERMANENT <br />AGENDA FILE IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE. ALL RECORDINGS OF THE MEETING WILL BE <br />KEPT FOR 5 YEARS. <br />Vice Chair Brown called the meeting to order since the Chair would be arriving later. <br />1. Additions or Changes to the Agenda <br />For item 9-a, there was some additional information only. <br />PUBLIC CHARGE <br />Commissioner Brown dispensed with the reading of the public charge. <br />2. Public Comments <br />a. Matters not an the Printed Agenda <br />Mark Peters spoke on behalf of NoMerger.org. He read information that is on this <br />website: NoMerger.org has published a spreadsheet analyzing the stated positions of all <br />speakers from the 3 public hearings regarding possible merger of the city and county schools of <br />Orange County. Moses Carey, Jr. stated in the Feb 12th BOCC meeting that 35°~-40°Io of the <br />people speaking at the hearings were in favor of merger. Our analysis shows that this figure is <br />incorrect. After counting each speaker who spoke at multiple hearings only once, we found that <br />only 25°~ were for school merger. By contrast, 64% were AGAINST merger, and 11 % were <br />neutral. This means there were 2 112 TIMES as many speakers AGAINST merger as FOR it. <br />NoMerger.org calls on the BOCC to represent the will of its constituency and officially vote to <br />take merger off of the table and focus on implementing recommendations of the studies which <br />are soon to begin. However, we have a serious concern that the current studies are intended to <br />hide merger from the citizens and voters until the election is over. We call on all the Board of <br />County Commissioners to pledge to respect local control of the separate school districts. <br />Mr. Peters left a copy of the spreadsheet with the Clerk. <br />Commissioner Carey commented that the numbers he gave were from tallies that <br />he personally took when he made notes during the public hearing. He said that he knows what <br />he wrote down. <br />