Letter To Fair Board

To: Davidson County Fair Board of Commissioners, The Fairgrounds Heritage Preservation Group is writing to request that you change the time of the fair board meetings from 8am to 6pm - 7pm . We have received many requests from individuals asking for this change since an 8am meeting is during the work day for most people, and therefore shuts out most of the general public. Further, we feel that holding a “public” meeting at a time that most of the pubic is unavailable violates the spirit, at least, of TCA 8-44, the Tennessee Open Meetings Act. An additional compliant that the people have is how the public has been prevented at these “public” meetings from broaching certain subjects such as the county charter or the race track specifically. Further, we demand you take better minutes of your meetings and bring them into compliance with TCA 8-44. In the past, a person not attending a fair board meeting would have little idea what actually went on in that meeting from the printed minutes. TCA 8-44-104(a) requires that minutes “shall include, but not be limited to, a record of persons present, all motions, proposals and resolutions offered, the results of any votes taken, and a record of individual votes in the event of roll call.” We have noticed in the printed minutes, that all persons present are not noted, except for members of the Board, even when it’s a large group of people in support of a particular issue. Neither are all discussions reported, nor are all proposals from the public, including written proposals, reported in the minutes. A particularly blatant example of this is the December 2008 meeting in which approximately 50-75 members of the public attended and addressed the Board through several spokesmen concerning race track operations. The attendance of this large group, nor their presentation, nor the ensuing discussion was reported in the published minutes. At that same meeting, several persons also attended to support opposition to some of the Board’s decisions and proposals on the usage of the Fairgrounds. This group and its presentation and discussion are also absent from the published minutes. Nor do the minutes report the group who attended in opposition to the ban on sale of domestic animals at fleamarkets. It should also be noted that this meeting with its unusually large public turnout, was one of the rare board meetings held at 5:30 pm, after normal work hours. In the March 2009 minutes, the motion of a Board Member to overturn a previous board decision was not given mention in the minutes. In subsequent meetings, other presentations to the Board from the public, such as the opposition from a local resident concerning the parking of school busses on the fairgrounds went unreported in the minutes.

There seems to be a pattern emerging that any persons or discussions in opposition to the Fair Board or its policies and decisions are suppressed from the published minutes. While we realize that the published minutes are not verbatim, and represent an edited version of actual discussions and comments, we feel that this should be honest editing, preserving the actual event and the intent of all presentations and discussions before the board, as well as the attendee list, all as required by both the intent and requirements TCA 8-44. Thank you for your consideration. Fairgrounds Heritage Preservation Group P.O. Box 23123 Nashville, TN, 37202