The Tarrant Appraisal District’s board of directors met on Wednesday for the first time this year and swore in newly elected members while making changes to the current schedule.
Members Mike Alfred, Alan Blaylock, Wendy Burgess, Fred Campos, and Gloria Peña have been officially sworn into the board after residents selected them for the positions during a December voting period, per The Fort Worth Report.
This meeting also featured the term lengths determined by a sheriff’s deputy pulling ping pong balls, resulting in various term lengths for each of the newly sworn-in board members.
The drawing determined that Blaylock, Campos, and Peña will each serve three-year terms while Alfred and Burgess will only serve one-year terms, as reported by The Fort Worth Report.
The board also voted 6-3 in favor of newly elected tax assessor-collector Rick Barnes becoming the board chair, while Callie Rigney was voted to serve as the board secretary.
Barnes said he plans to continue pushing for changes to the property tax appraisals, which he advocated for during his campaign.
“As your new tax assessor-collector, this body was a huge part of what I ran on for the past 18 months,” he said, per FWR.
Finally, the board discussed and eventually approved changes to the schedule for future meetings.
Previous board meetings have occurred on Fridays at 8 a.m. and allowed the residents to speak for five minutes at a time, though new changes will severely limit their ability to voice their opinions.
Barnes explained that he had “never seen anything as long as five minutes in a public meeting,” noting that the board could be more efficient with its time, per FWR.
Moving forward, the meetings will be held on Wednesdays at 9 a.m., and residents will only be allowed three minutes to speak.