If you want to attend a Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting next year, you can start your planning now.
The board has released its meeting calendar for 2020 – a calendar that includes a two-day retreat on Monday, Feb. 24 and Tuesday, Feb. 25, only one meeting in January and one in July, and a special meeting on Monday morning, Dec. 7 to swear in local elected officials who win in the November 2020 election.
Other than January, July and December, the commissioners will continue to meet, as they have for years, on the first and third Thursday of each month.
The calendar doesn’t list meeting times, but those will continue to be held at 5:30 p.m. in the large meeting room on the second floor of the Old Guilford County Court House. One of the simplest but most brilliant moves ever made by a Guilford County commissioner was one about a decade and half ago when former Commissioner Mike Winstead convinced the board to move its regular meeting times from 6:30 p.m. to 5:30 pm. Many county staff have to attend the meetings and, when those meetings were held at 6:30 p.m., that meant staff just milled around uselessly for an hour after getting off work and it was a colossal waste of time for staff and for reporters who also had to hang around for an extra hour.
The Board of Commissioners holds an annual retreat each year to plan for the coming year. Two decades ago, that retreat was almost always held in mid January. Then it moved to late January, and then to early February, and, in recent years, it’s been held in late February, which seems late to be starting out for planning the year.
The Board of Commissioners is required by law to meet at least once a month.
