Typically, I attend city council and county commission meetings with the same gaggle of people that sit in the same place in the respective rooms each week. We file in and resume our positions to hear the same people talk about issues that affect everyone in the county.
However, in the last couple months there has been a shift.
I now enter the rooms to see filled seats and multi-page public comment sheets, and I feel a certain hope.
Much of my days keeping up with the happenings in Rowan County are spent on Facebook and other social media, where people love to talk about their problems, often in particularly colorful language that I wouldn’t quote in the paper. But then I never see these people at the meetings, expressing their problems to the people who could actually help.
That is until data centers and cut transit spending filled the agendas, and Facebook group postings and private conversations became the basis for three- to four-minute speeches in front of elected representatives.
Suddenly, changes are being made. While the Facebook groups would still tell you nothing is happening, the feature-length-film long meetings say otherwise. Conversations between elected officials and staff that might not have happened otherwise are happening. Votes that are typically an easy “yes” have turned into actual conversation.
After my third or fourth consecutive week of sitting in multi-hour meetings with public comment sections longer than the business agenda, I felt it was high time to say: keep showing up.
Kannapolis will pass their budget that will likely include a cut in transit funding, but the council members had an hour-long conversation about including more funding to find alternatives faster because of the public input against the cut.
Salisbury might pass the data center text amendment in the upcoming meeting, but the amendment has been through six different meetings with three different boards that have all taken pause to consider what people are asking for when it comes to restrictions. Even if it is passed, a data center application will include more public hearings for residents to express their concerns.
In a time when Facebook posting yields the instant gratification of likes and comments back, agreeing with your point of view, I urge you to express your opinions face-to-face with the people that have been tasked to help. Showing up and speaking your mind is not fruitless. It is your right as a resident of this county to take advantage of that time.
Even if a meeting is not feasible, communicating with your representatives on a local level is important. An email or message typically gets read and sometimes makes its way to impact an agenda itself.
For the sake of transparency, yes, a long public comment period and increased discourse makes for some more fun articles. However, beyond that, it makes me happier to go to these meetings and see real people that care about the future of their communities willing to take the time out of their evenings to express their opinions.
When the data centers go to planning and budget season passes, keep showing up to watch or talk, if only to keep the regulars company or become a regular yourself.
Janet Briggs covers Salisbury, Kannapolis and Rowan County for the Salisbury Post.
