The agenda and meeting materials for the June 27 meeting of the Community Reparations Commission Meeting are now available for review by the general public. The $355,000 consulting group helping to manage the commission’s efforts is still working to define processes and structure to be followed by the commission in accomplishing its mission. The consultants are also working to educate the commission members on how the commission will develop and present recommendations and comply with open meeting laws.
The official meeting minutes from the commission’s June 6 meeting tell us that the meeting appears to have been spent educating the fourteen commission members and two alternates who joined the meeting regarding meeting procedures and the city and county budgets. Eleven of the carefully selected commission members and four alternates were absent from this meeting.
At their June 27 meeting, the commission will discuss commission participation by youth, and they will review a portion of the commission member onboarding guide that covers the commission’s responsibilities. Additionally, the commission will review a presentation prepared by the consultant that describes the high-level project activities/timeline and lays out a plan for developing/presenting recommendations.
This planning document provides some good information for citizens. The timeline on page 3 of the presentation tells us that the commission will begin working to develop “Immediate Recommendations” on July 1. Page 10 of the document tells us what criteria the commission will use to categorize a recommendation as “Immediate”:
| o Importance: High o Expected Impact: High o Implementation Timeframe: within 6 months o Time Sensitive: Yes. If Time Sensitive, what is/are the key milestone date(s)? (i.e., November Election) |
This final bullet point is just one more reason that this commission should be disbanded immediately and in perpetuity, along with a reversal of the decision to pay reparations. This official taxpayer-funded planning document states that it is highly important for this commission to recommend some way to spend a portion of the allotted $4 million for FY2023 on something within six months if they hope to have a high impact on this year’s mid-term elections.
That is PRECISELY what it says. The message is crystal clear:
The single-party Asheville and Buncombe County governments want their black residents to see that they will devote vast sums of money to black residents, black communities, black businesses, and non-profits; and they hope black residents will keep that in mind as they head to the polls in November.
