During a disagreement over how to handle a roadwork project, District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller said it was time the board changed presidents.
She also accused current president Orlando Trainer of keeping secrets from the board and suggested a system of rotating president duties on the board starting next year — something other counties do.
Miller said she hopes District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery will be the next board president.
“I do wish that this next term we would rotate around like the other counties do to let somebody else be president,” she said. “I think John ought to be president this next time. I mean, he’s been vice president for three years. I think somebody else ought to have the opportunity to sit in that chair.”
Supervisors select the board president and vice president at the beginning of each year. Trainer, who’s held office since 1999, has been board president since 2013 after former president Marvell Howard gave up the position.
The discussion arose when Miller, during the portion of the meeting when supervisors bring matters from their districts to the board for consideration, requested votes for work such as placing gravel around dumpsters on Longview Road.
Trainer questioned whether such motions were necessary, saying he thought some of the matters were “routine maintenance stuff” and didn’t require a board vote.
“Are we all going to have to start doing that?” Trainer said. “Most of the time if something like that needs to be done, I just mention it to the road manager and they just try to work it in. I didn’t know it has to take a board order because if that’s the way we’re going to do it, I have to change my whole style of the way I get things done.”
Miller said Trainer is free to keep handling matters as he wishes, but she wants a board order for record-keeping purposes.
“It’s because when I’ve asked for things to be done, sometimes they aren’t,” she said. “I would like my stuff documented.”
She further emphasized that all the board members have equal powers at the table and the president is tasked with leading the meetings. However, Miller said she feels Trainer sometimes gets information the rest of the board does not.
“Well it does happen,” Trainer said.
Trainer, speaking to the Dispatch, said he holds the president position at the board’s discretion. He added that he isn’t going to “lose sleep” over possibly losing the position.
Trainer said he took the president position because, he was at the time, the only supervisor not working a full-time job. He also denied he hides information from other supervisors.
“She seems to think I’m withholding information from the other board members and that’s not the case,” he said. “At the same time, by the same token, I don’t try to follow up on every little thing and make an issue out of everything and spread a lot of unnecessary chaos when you don’t have all the information for everything that comes to the table.”
As for a new president, Trainer said he’d be happy to nominate Miller to the position.
Montgomery said he appreciated Miller’s confidence but wouldn’t want the president position unless Trainer decides to step down.
“It’s his position and I think he’s done a good job with it,” Montgomery said. “I don’t think I’d go for that. That would be something we’d have to agree on, among the board, that we’re going to rotate.”
Still, Miller says she sees the discussion as a chance to take a serious look at returning to rotating the president’s seat.
“It’s a good opportunity to have a change,” she said. “A lot of counties do rotate. In Oktibbeha County, they used to rotate.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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