Commissioner: Keep retreat local

Mooresville commissioner Rhett Dusenbury is criticizing plans by his fellow commissioners to hold their annual retreat Feb. 21-22 out of town.

The commissioners plan to hold the retreat over 1 1/2 days at Graylyn International Conference Center in Winston-Salem – 58 miles from downtown Mooresville.

For the past three years, commissioners have held the retreat in Mooresville, including last year at the town’s operations center on U.S. 21.

The retreat will cost taxpayers about $7,000 – the same amount it cost last year, Town Clerk Janet Pope told Dusenbury when he requested the figures at the Feb. 4 Mooresville Board of Commissioners meeting.

The town kept the tab the same by shortening the retreat from 2 1/2 days, Pope said.

Dusenbury said the money should stay in Mooresville. “I have trouble giving tax dollars to another county,” he said.

Holding the retreat in town also makes it more accessible to local residents, Dusenbury added.

Dusenbury was met with silence when he urged his fellow commissioners to reconsider the site of the retreat.

Before the board went into closed session to discuss economic-development, property-acquisition and personnel issues, commissioner Bobby Compton defended the board’s decision to an Observer reporter.

Compton said holding the retreat out of town eliminates distractions. Commissioners can discuss issues longer, even over dinner, in trying to reach consensus, he said. Only one resident attended last year’s retreat, he added.

For the first time, commissioners will use a professional facilitator at the retreat, Margaret Henderson of the UNC School of Government in Chapel Hill, Compton said.

Former Mooresville commissioner Frank Rader, who was in the audience Jan. 4, told the Observer he agreed that out-of-town retreats are more effective in getting commissioners to work together “in the same huddle.”