A proposed increase in the number of members on the St. Joseph County Road Commission board took another step forward Tuesday (March 1) as the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners held a public hearing on the subject.
County commissioners scheduled the hearing during their January 18th meeting after reaching consensus during a January 11th work session to consider the issue further.
Tuesday’s hearing was brief with only one citizen – Tim Carls of Centreville – addressing commissioners during the proceeding. Carls, a frequent critic of the Road Commission, said, “I’d really like to know if these next two people that you’re going to put on this board are really going to get a truck out in the case of an emergency situation, or a payloader, or some type of equipment to help some of the fire personnel, the police personnel, or something else. Do any one of you have a comment on that?
Commissioner Rick Shaffer, in his 'Chairman's Report,' said the board will be discussing the proposed Road Commission board increase as an agenda item "probably very soon."
There were no comments from commissioners and, in the course of his remarks, Carls said, “Right now, I’m totally against adding two more.” (Tim_Carls_comments – 2:15)
Toward the end of the meeting – in his Chairman’s Report – Commissioner Rick Shaffer said, “We have had many discussions about this and moved those discussions to a formal process of input tonight. Commissioners will be considering at what point we bring this forward for the commission to act upon.” And he added, “We’ll be discussing it as an agenda item probably very soon.”
