Jay Paul and the Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners hope the addition of microphones will provide better sound during Monday’s meeting at the courthouse.
Paul, chairman of the board of commissioners, anticipates a large crowd, prompting a return to the courthouse, where the March meeting was held.
Paul announced the change last week.
Unlike that meeting, which was plagued by acoustic issues, there will be at least two microphones at the commissioner’s table. A microphone will also be located at the lectern for the public comment portion.
“Now, we think we’re able to utilize some of the microphones that are there,” he said. “That’s not going to be perfect, but we believe that it’s going to be better than it was before.”
Attempts were made to rearrange the board’s seating, which will be near the judge’s bench, to help with the room’s dynamics, but that was unsuccessful.
“Because (the tables) are tethered with technology, we don’t have the latitude to just move them any way we want them,” Paul said. “So we’re still going to have a little bit of a problem for the commissioners in the way they’re (seated).”
The BOC meetings returned to the county meeting room, which seats about 30 people, in April and earlier this month. The courtroom can seat about 150 people.
“A couple of times in the past few months we’ve had more people than we’ve had room,” Paul said. “This meeting coming up in June may be the same scenario.”
The primary driver behind the expected crowd is Adam Swann’s request to rezone land on Yancey Road from A2 (General Agriculture) to AR (Agriculture Residential). The change would allow for a 25-home conservation subdivision to be built, with 50% of the total acreage being preserved as permanent open space.
The request has garnered significant attention on Facebook, with residents voicing concerns about how the neighborhood will impact traffic at Yancey Road and Highway 78 and the surrounding area.
“We’re starting to get a lot of emails, and the zoning board got a lot of response to the notice of the rezone, so we’re expecting the crowd due to that,” District 4 Commissioner Will Brown said.
The county intends to make long-term changes to improve the audio in the courthouse later this summer. The updates include microphones for each commissioner and the installation of sound baffles to deaden the echo.
However, while sound baffles are a possibility, Paul said they “are not the highest priority.”