Our Response to Commissioner White's Town Hall 4/8/25
We want to extend our sincere apologies to those who attended Commissioner Braxton White’s Town Hall on April 8th based on our recommendation. Unfortunately, the event did not meet expectations.
Many of the questions presented were not centered on local issues and, more notably, appeared heavily scripted. While a few were thoughtful, the responses from Commissioner White were strikingly well-prepared—complete with pre-written quotes read directly from his phone. Although attendees were invited to submit questions upon arrival, we’re fairly certain none of the selected questions came from that evening’s submissions. This only reinforces the impression that the event was carefully orchestrated in advance.
If Commissioner White had no intention of answering questions spontaneously, a more honest approach would have been to solicit questions ahead of time and release a recorded response via social media. Instead, the public was misled into attending what turned out to be a performance rather than a genuine town hall.
Our intended question was:
“At the most recent Commissioners meeting I attended, the Commissioners indicated their willingness to support our efforts in monitoring the county-wide reassessment process. However, when we submitted a Right-to-Know (RTK) request to the county for the commercial appraisals, the request was denied on questionable grounds—that the county did not “physically have” the information. This is the same type of data that, as demonstrated with previous RTK requests for residential records, could have been obtained without difficulty.Rather than facilitating transparency, the county chose to have their solicitor represent Vision Solutions in the RTK appeal process. The full RTK request and the county solicitor’s responses are available on the www.TaxClarion.com website for public review.Given these circumstances, would you be willing to formally request this information directly from Vision Solutions tomorrow? Your action would go a long way toward keeping this process open and transparent, and would help the many concerned taxpayers better understand the impact of the reassessment.”If Commissioner White—or any other commissioner—wishes to respond to this question, whether in writing or by recording, we’re more than willing to listen.
Again, we sincerely apologize to our supporters. We were misled—and unfortunately, so were you.
-This response is our own personal beliefs.