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To: Davidson County Fair Board of Commissioners,The Fairgrounds Heritage Preservation Group is writing to request that you change the time of the fair  board meetings from 8am to 6pm - 7pm . We have received many requests from individuals asking for this change since an 8am meeting is during the work day for most people, and therefore shuts out mostof the general public. Further, we feel that holding a “public” meeting at a time that most of the pubicis unavailable violates the spirit, at least, of TCA 8-44, the Tennessee Open Meetings Act.An additional compliant that the people have is how the public has been prevented at these “public”meetings from broaching certain subjects such as the county charter or the race track specifically.Further, we demand you take better minutes of your meetings and bring them into compliance withTCA 8-44. In the past, a person not attending a fair board meeting would have little idea what actuallywent on in that meeting from the printed minutes. TCA 8-44-104(a) requires that minutes “shallinclude, but not be limited to, a record of persons present, all motions, proposals and resolutionsoffered, the results of any votes taken, and a record of individual votes in the event of roll call.”We have noticed in the printed minutes, that all persons present are not noted, except for members of the Board, even when it’s a large group of people in support of a particular issue. Neither are alldiscussions reported, nor are all proposals from the public, including written proposals, reported in theminutes.A particularly blatant example of this is the December 2008 meeting in which approximately 50-75members of the public attended and addressed the Board through several spokesmen concerning racetrack operations. The attendance of this large group, nor their presentation, nor the ensuing discussionwas reported in the published minutes. At that same meeting, several persons also attended to supportopposition to some of the Board’s decisions and proposals on the usage of the Fairgrounds. This groupand its presentation and discussion are also absent from the published minutes. Nor do the minutesreport the group who attended in opposition to the ban on sale of domestic animals at fleamarkets.It should also be noted that this meeting with its unusually large public turnout, was one of the rare board meetings held at 5:30 pm,
after 
normal work hours.In the March 2009 minutes, the motion of a Board Member to overturn a previous board decision wasnot given mention in the minutes.In subsequent meetings, other presentations to the Board from the public, such as the opposition from alocal resident concerning the parking of school busses on the fairgrounds went unreported in theminutes.
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