August 9 to discuss setting a public hearing date during their 9:00 am August 13 board meeting, but no one did. JFAN President and Executive Director Diane Rosenberg attended the August 13 morning meeting to ask about the public hearing. She had to wait until the public comments section to bring it up since it wasn’t on the agenda. 

 

The supervisors can only make decisions on items listed in an agenda. They can listen to constituents during the public comments section but can’t make any decisions during that time. Such an item would have to be added to a future meeting’s agenda and given a minimum 24 hour notice.

 

The supervisors discussed whether or not to set up a follow-up board meeting the next day and a meeting was tentatively set up 24 hours later to be held at 10:45 am on August 14. Sanquist and Reed were supportive of a next day board meeting to discuss holding a public hearing, but Dimmitt was not and voted against it. 

 

To complicate things, the DNR had a deadline of August 14 to post the legal notice announcing a public hearing for the Daniels Site. The Fairfield Ledger had a printing deadline for legal notices at 9:00 am to be printed in the August 14 paper, nearly two hours before the 10:45 am meeting would have occurred. Therefore, the supervisors determined that there wasn’t time to get a notice into the paper if they went ahead with the August 14 board meeting. As a result, the possibility of a public meeting was not discussed, and one was not held.

 

JFAN contends that had one of the supervisors included an agenda point to discuss scheduling a public hearing during the August 13 Monday morning board meeting, which there was time to do, there would have been time to post the required legal notice on August 14 and hold a public hearing on the Daniels Site.