Did the New Bern Board of Aldermen decide to meet once or twice a month?
The Board of Aldermen met at City Hall on Oct. 28, 2025, which was during the early voting period for the November Runoff Election for mayor and alderman of Ward 4 in New Bern, NC.
One of the meeting agenda items was to consider adopting the 2026 Board of Aldermen meeting schedule.
City Manager Foster Hughes said the current board needed to approve the 2026 meeting schedule although the new board will be seated on Dec. 9. He said if the new board doesn’t agree with it, then they can change it when they are seated.
He presented three options for the new schedule that can be found on page 22-25 of the meeting packet.
He said the board had adopted the second option — Roster A — which observes one meeting during the month of May through August. He was referring to when the board adopted “a roster that observes one meeting per month during the summer months” last year for the 2025 meeting schedule, according to the meeting packet.
On Oct. 28, 2025, the city manager presented a third option to the board that he said included one meeting a month with the exception of two (budget work sessions) meetings in April.
Foster Hughes said the first one that the board has historically gone with is a meeting on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month with the exception of December.
Alderman Rick Prill made a motion to approve the meeting roster for 2026, and Alderman Bobby Aster seconded it.
The city manager asked the board to choose an option.
Mayor Jeffrey Odham said, “The option with the one meeting during the summer months.”
Alderman Prill said, “Yeah, just the one meeting a month.”
The city manager added, “The one meeting a month with the two in April?”
The mayor said, “Correct?” Is that what you understood?
Alderman Aster and Prill said yes.
The mayor said everyone was good with that. He then asked for ayes and nays.
It sounded like some members said “aye” but it’s unclear who voted.
The mayor said, “it passes.”
A few minutes later, Alderman Rick Prill said he would no longer be a resident of Ward 1 and said he was resigning as of Nov. 1.
Based on the information that Foster Hughes presented to the board last year for the 2025 BOA meeting schedule, and the mayor’s statement — “The option with one meeting during the summer months” and the comment made by Hughes’s after the motion was made by Alderman Prill, it appeared to be the same meeting format as the 2025 meeting schedule (on page 24 of the meeting packet). The schedule has two regular meetings each month in January, February, March and April; one regular meeting each month in May, June, July and August with a work session in May; two meetings a month in September, October and November; and one meeting a month in December.
The city’s website shows a different schedule — one regular meeting a month with the exception of two meetings in April and a work session in May.
We asked the aldermen, city manager and mayor to clarify what was the “it” that passed? What motion did the Board of Aldermen vote on? Who voted for what?
We asked Rick Prill to clarify which schedule he thought the mayor was referring to. He said, “If memory serves me, I thought what we were voting on was a schedule that had only one meeting scheduled during the summer months, as we did in 2025.”
We also asked the aldermen, city manager and mayor, “Why was the board asked to set the new board’s schedule ahead of the new board being seated?” The aldermen, city manager or mayor did not respond by press time.
“It forces our staff and others to tighten up…”
After winning the runoff race, Jeffrey Odham spent an hour talking about the Board of Aldermen and the city’s business on Sabrina Bengel — the vice chairman of the Housing Authority of the City of New Bern’s Board of Commissioners – internet reality/talk radio show.
He has been a regular guest on the 11-year-old show for years. The show has been livestreamed from the public office holder’s private office building since at least 2017 when they went off the air for a while. The people she hired to livestream the shows have changed over the years, but it’s still her show.
It looks like the vice chairman and mayor have been framing the narrative about city business to suit their agendas. Most recently, the housing authority commissioner said the mayor changed the meeting schedule. She said, “The Board of Aldermen, instead of two meetings a month has now gone to one meeting a month. It will be on the second Tuesday of every month.”
The mayor said, “It forces our staff and others to tighten up whenever they are making submissions that need to be on the agenda…”
It’s noteworthy to mention that Odham appointed Bengel to the Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners in 2022. During the 2025 mayoral runoff election, the vice chairman endorsed the mayor during her radio/social media show.
A closer look
On Nov. 18, we asked the city for a link to the 2026 BOA meeting schedule and received a copy of a meeting schedule that shows one regular meeting a month and a work session in May. The schedule is posted here.
The Oct. 28 meeting minutes don’t mention the mayor’s statement or the comment by the city manager that were made after Alderman Prill’s made a motion. Instead, the minutes state, “Alderman Prill made a motion to approve the Board of Aldermen meeting roster with one meeting a month except for two in April, seconded by Alderman Aster. The motion carried unanimously 6-0.”
As previously mentioned, Prill “thought what we were voting on was a schedule that had only one meeting scheduled during the summer months, as we did in 2025.”
What do the newly elected aldermen want?
In September, NewBernNow.com asked each candidate who was running for alderman, “How often do you think the Board of Aldermen should meet?” Four of the six aldermen candidates who won said the Board of Aldermen should meet at least twice a month as reported here.
City Charter provides for regular meetings twice a month
According to the last time a municipal election was held in an odd-numbered year, the newly elected aldermen set their meeting schedule during their December 2017 organizational meeting. At the time, the board held regular meetings twice a month, and work sessions were held bimonthly.
“The City Charter provides for regular meetings to be held on the 2nd and the 4th Tuesdays of the month,” according to the meeting minutes.
The minutes also stated Alderman Odham made a motion to eliminate scheduled work sessions that weren’t affiliated with the budget sessions and the board approved the motion.
A city without a mayor pro tem
Rick Prill was New Bern’s mayor pro tempore until he resigned. Since then, Trey Ferguson took the oath of office to fill the vacant Ward 1 alderman seat, but the board did not appoint a new mayor pro tem. We asked the aldermen, city manager and mayor why the city doesn’t have a mayor pro tem but they did not respond by press time.
What do you think?
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