When is this meeting going to end? An idle thought which at some point has passed through the mind of anyone ever stuck in a meeting that has gone on way too long. That is now a literal reality for Pierce County’s Industrial Development and Building Authority (IDBA).
The IDBA’s March 9 meeting began with a quorum, but did not end with one. Having been rescheduled twice already, once due to illness on the part of Executive Director Blake James and once to accommodate the schedule of those giving a special presentation to a closed session of the IDBA board and members of the county government, perhaps the March meeting had already begun under a cloud.
Due to another previously scheduled meeting, IDBA Board Vice President Rodney James had to leave prior to the end of this one. With that in mind, the agenda was quickly reshuffled. Following the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance, the February minutes and financials were hurriedly voted into the official record so the board could then move into what became a very extended closed session.
R. James left about an hour into the closed session. This meant, once the presentation and teleconference which formed the bulk of the hour and a half long closed session was finished, there was no longer a quorum of members present sufficient to conduct any further business—even for something as simple as adjourning the meeting. No further business could be legally conducted.
All of this puts the IDBA in the odd position of making the first order of business of their next meeting to officially adjourn the March meeting which by then will have lasted 24 days total. It will be a strangely fitting moment, capping a tiny comedy of errors, ending the IDBA’s last meeting and beginning their next one on April Fool’s Day.
