Residents press council on EDC transparency and board appointments; EDC director defends confidentiality

Mount Pleasant residents at a community Q&A pressed the City Council about transparency and recent changes to the Economic Development Corporation board, asking whether council members should serve on a board that the council later oversees.

Kent Bassinger, a local small-business owner, asked why two new EDC board seats were filled by council appointees and called the arrangement "wrong" if councilors are effectively overseeing themselves. "It just seems wrong that we put council members on a board that they actually oversee," Bassinger said.

Several residents, including Holly Parker, told the council they felt excluded from decisions that had been handled in executive session. "We don't have any say in what's gonna go on in this community," Parker said, arguing that executive sessions and closed-door negotiations kept residents from meaningful input.

Nathan Tafoya, executive director of the Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corporation, responded that some EDC work must remain confidential during negotiations for competitive and legal reasons. Tafoya said the EDC often signs nondisclosure agreements to protect potential investors and cited federal securities rules that can penalize premature disclosure for publicly traded companies. "Sometimes there's an NDA, we're working a lot of real estate deals...This is business. We don't want to violate those types of secrets," Tafoya said. He also noted that the EDC is a public entity with annual reporting obligations to the comptroller and that any incentive packages come back to the city council for approval.

Council members and EDC representatives agreed on two near-term responses: a joint review and update of the EDC’s bylaws and a discussion about expanding the board to add more community and financial expertise. Several council members said they would support increasing board membership (one suggestion was seven members) so that council liaisons, if present, would not dominate the board’s decision-making and so the board would include more independent business and finance professionals.

What remains unresolved: residents asked for clarity about two recent EDC resignations (from senior bank executives) and whether the council-appointed replacements were the best available candidates. Speakers said they would begin a process to solicit applications and consider board composition changes, but no formal vote or appointment was completed at the meeting.

Ending: the session closed with an appeal for unity. John Anderson, a resident and local investor, urged private reconciliation and collaborative work to make Mount Pleasant attractive to employers and to protect the downtown’s character.