Council Chair Accused of Changing Meeting Schedule to Spoil Coalition Plans to Seek Redress of Concerns
Greenville County Council meets each first and third Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m. December 7 is the first Tuesday in December. Citizens are allowed to speak at those meetings for no more than 3 minutes each regarding items on the agenda if no public hearing has been held on the item and on any subject near the end of the meeting. Total time allotted for public input is 30 minutes.
Leaders of the Upstate Conservative Coalition announced that they were holding a press conference at county square at 5:30 to discuss the decision to appeal the court decision on district account expenditures and asked members to sign up to speak at the council meeting to follow. They are especially concerned about gifts of taxpayer funds to other government agencies and illegal donations to organizations such as the NAACP by individual council members without a vote by the full council as required by law.
Council Chairman Butch Kirvin changed the time of the council meeting from 6 to 5:30 and changed the designation of the meeting from regular to a special called meeting with no public input permitted.
Members of the coalition see the actions of the chairman as deliberate and confrontational. Roan Garcia-Quintana, Executive Director of Americans Have Had Enough Coalition, described Chairman Kirven’s actions as “just more abuse of power.”