No further clarity on adjournment of commission's weekly business meeting

The Hill County Commissioners’ weekly business meeting Thursday experienced technical difficulties that resulted in much of it being unintelligible and then it ended abruptly without explanation.

Commissioners Mike Wendland and Mark Peterson have both declined to comment on the meeting.

“We don’t want to stir the pot,” Peterson said this morning.

During the meeting, Wendland appeared to be listing claims for approval as normal.

Commissioner Diane McLean’s comments were consistently unintelligible throughout the meeting due to the technical difficulties.

Peterson repeatedly argued during the meeting that it was not made public and was, therefore, illegal.

“I don’t know that we can call this an official meeting,” he said at one point. “ … We are not doing this as a public meeting. We did not wait, we did not advertise this as a public meeting, we advertised that it would be a GoToMeeting.”

When Hill County Clerk and Recorder Sue Armstrong tried to provide some documents to the commission, Peterson said he would not participate.

“I’m going to remind you that I don’t believe this is not an open public meeting, and we are holding it, I think it’s an illegal meeting, and I am stating openly that I think this meeting is in fact that, and that we cannot take any action. It’s nothing against you or the document you’re providing. That’s my feeling, so I’m not going to participate in this.”

“There’s people on the meeting right now that want to get in and they can’t hear us,” Peterson said later.

The commissioners disconnected shortly after it was pointed out that GoToMeeting was running and people were logged in.

Hill County Commissioner Administrative Assistant Brittany Pfeifer wrote in the chat log of the virtual meeting the they had adjourned and there was no further information.