The case of the disappearing "public comment" agenda item

Citizens showed up for Tuesday night's Davidson Board meeting at Town Hall expecting to deliver their three minute comments on items like the proposed new Griffith Street hotel next to CSD  They had reason to be there.  The agenda had space reserved for public comment, and citizens were going to deliver them.

Unfortunately, when they got there the public comment section had been removed.  That left people feeling misled, manipulated, and more than a little annoyed.

Reference to the lack of a public comment section was made in the powerful comments featured in this post on the safety issues with placing a hotel next to an elementary/middle school.

In fact the disappearing comment section had many people thinking "was I seeing things, was that really on the agenda?"  Surely, the town would not have published an agenda with a section for comments and then pulled it off because there were other controversial items on the agenda that might draw the ire of citizens.

So, what happened?

Well, here at aShortChronicle we love a good "Town Hall Mystery" so we took a look after getting in touch with a reader who was 100% certain it had been on the agenda initially.

A little sleuthing revealed what likely happened.

Check out the below links.  The first is the desktop web address for the Tuesday agenda.  The second is the address for mobile version optimized for mobile devices.

https://davidson.novusagenda.com/AgendaPublic/MeetingView.aspx?MeetingID=585&MinutesMeetingID=269&doctype=Agenda

https://davidson.novusagenda.com/agendapublic/Mobile/MeetingView.aspx?meetingid=585

Here is what they showed as of Friday evening.

Desktop Version  (no public comment)

Mobile Version (public comment)

Websites often have different versions of their pages for desktop and mobile presentation, and in this case it appears one page was updated while one was not.

Now, to be fair, Davidson typically does not have a public comment section during the work session meetings.  A review of past meetings verifies this. However, this one was publicized initially with public comment, and then it certainly appears it was removed.  Making matters worse, this occurred on an evening with controversial items on the agenda and there was a full house.  The Town did not own up to its mistake and subsequent correction which is disappointing.

Then again, owning up to mistakes isn't this Town Hall's strong suit, so that is not too much of a surprise.