Mohave County Board of Supervisors (BOS) meetings normally held in the Mohave County seat community of Kingman could someday be held in other northwest Arizona municipalities. District 5 Supervisor Ron Gould floated the proposal during Monday’s board meeting.
“I think it would be interesting to actually take the Board of Supervisors show on the road, so to speak,” Gould said. Rotating the meetings to other communities, he said, extends citizen observation and participation opportunity to residents who otherwise have at least a 100-mile, round-trip drive to endure.
Gould said the county might partner with city government for meeting space to allow traveling, rotating Board of Supervisors sessions. “I’m sure we could strike a deal with the Lake Havasu City council and the Bullhead City council to use their facilities there, and their meeting halls there,” Gould said.
Board Chairman Hildy Angius told Gould that his idea had been explored some six years ago.
“In 2013 when I took office with the new board, at that time we brought this up and we directed to go to staff,” Angius explained. “What we found out was the cost of doing this was exceptionally high.”
The previous Board abandoned consideration of rotating meetings because several department heads and other key staff members frequently need to be in attendance. It was decided to be costly and inefficient to have those county employees losing productive work time to travel to other communities for board meetings.
Another consideration is that citizens in outlying areas can watch BOS meetings live or in playback mode through the county website and its you tube meeting streaming feature.
Gould reasoned that it wouldn’t be too time consuming or difficult to explore the concept once again since much of the work has been done before. And he said it could be that available technology may eliminate past issues with traveling meetings.
Supervisors supported Gould with a 5-0 board vote, directing staff to conduct a feasibility study examining various cost and efficiency factors associated with the travel.
