It took me a couple weeks, but I finally sat down to watch the recording of the meeting from March 17. If you're not able to attend the meetings or watch the livestream when they happen, you can go back and watch on YouTube.
Instead of writing up notes on the specific agenda items from the meeting, I'd like to use this post to soft-launch what I'm calling County Council 101 by focusing on a specific question related to how the council operates.
During the meeting, there were at least three different times when a councillor called for a "roll call" vote. From what I've seen, most of the time when Council votes on an issue (or motion), everyone simply says essentially "yes" or "no." This is a voice vote, which seems pretty self-explanatory.
A voice vote works well enough when everyone (or almost everyone) is in agreement. It's pretty clear when most of the councillors say yes and only one or two say no. But if there is any uncertainty, the chair has other options to make sure the vote is recorded accurately.
One of those options is the roll call or recorded vote. If the chair, or any member of council, believes that a vote might be too close for a voice vote to work, then they can ask for a roll call vote in which each member's individual vote is recorded. Some groups may go down the line, calling each councillor's name and asking how they vote. Greenville County Council used electronic devices and then displayed the votes.
A roll call vote makes it clear which way the majority of council votes and also lets the rest of us look up how our representative voted on specific issues.
