Wednesday, August 20, 2014

August 20, 2014 Industrial Board Elects Officers Today

At the Morristown Industrial Development Board meeting this morning, the IDB will be electing "officers."


The current officers are Chairman Jack Fishman, Vice-chairman James Craine, and Secretary Marshall Ramsey.


It appears that the IDB is holding an election right now because one of its current officers (Marshall Ramsey) has been serving on the Board and has been signing legal documents for the Board for nearly two years without even being qualified to serve on the Board.


The most basic qualification for IDB membership is that an individual has to be a city voter--i. e. they reside in the City or they live outside the city but own property in the city. [This came from a discussion I had with IDB Attorney Bill Foutch about IDB qualifications several months ago]


Another requirement is that an IDB member can't serve on any other city board.

Ramsey lives in the county.


When questions about Ramsey not meeting IDB qualifications were raised recently, George McGuffin (of MUS and McGuffin Law fame), Don "TIF" Bunch, and Wayman Skelton came to Ramsey's rescue. They deeded a city lot in Hampton West to Ramsey on July 1, 2014, which made Ramsey a city property owner. With that freshly-signed July 1, 2014, deed in hand, Ramsey was re-appointed by city council to the IDB on---yep---July 1, 2014.


Now to tidy things up, the IDB is electing officers so its newly-qualified member Marshall Ramsey can be officially elected as secretary to the Board and can legally sign IDB documents.


And, yes, it is possible that someone else could be elected secretary or to any of the other offices today.


Another item of interest for future posts: Ramsey was not the only member of the 16-person Industrial Board who had been serving without being qualified to serve on the Board...more on the others later.

No comments: