Mecklenburg County Commission officially gets to work Tuesday

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The new Mecklenburg County Commission officially got to work on Tuesday night.

The new chair of the commission, Pat Cotham, opened up the meeting, and she recognized the importance of the board and how it is already making history.

"This is the first time we have had four women on this board, yeah woman, and this is the first time we have had four African-Americans on this board," said Cotham.

The first official meeting of the new board was relatively short, but commissioners did spend some time on the big issues like the property tax revaluation.

They named a temporary tax assessor.

Bobby Shields, a general manager within the county already, will be the assessor through July 1 of next year.

Shields replaced Garrett Alexander, who resigned over controversy with how the property tax revaluation was handled.

This will be the big issue for the new county commission.

It will have to figure out how to help those homeowners who severely overpaid and when the next county-wide revaluation will take place.

Those two issues did not come up in Tuesday night's meeting and it is not clear when it will.

The other big issue for Mecklenburg County Commissioners is the ongoing problems at the Department of Social Services. The director was fired in September.

The next regular meeting is two weeks from Tuesday.

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