Starting next month, Community Board 4 will begin meetings with an invocation   followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.The board passed a motion to that affect during a December 12 special meeting called because of difficulty achieving quorum at previous meetings.

The statement reads as follows: “Let us pray for the health and well being of our community as we work together, harmoniously, to meet the needs of the people we serve and represent.

That our differences will never divide us but strengthen our resolve to improve the welfare of those who live, work, and travel through our neighborhoods.

That brotherly love, professionalism, and respect will always prevail as we relate to each other in achieving our goals.

Thank you. Please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance.”

As reported in the November issue of the Highbridge Horizon, chairperson D. Lee Ezell emailed fellow board members in October proposing  to begin meetings with a “community prayer” followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Enough objections were raised that she agreed to postpone her plan until it had been discussed further.

However, on November 2, the board’s executive committee- which includes Ezell and -Rev. Dr. Timothy Birkett, the author of the prayer- unanimously passed a slightly revised version of the original statement. Several references to the word “pray” were removed, with the minutes of the November 2 meeting citing concerns from some board members as the reason for the changes: those members argued that the prayer excluded those of no religion and that the rotating list of Christian leaders scheduled to read it left out those of other faiths.

“The word prayer means to communicate,”Birkett countered. “To those who want to communicate, they can pray to Buddha, to Mecca, to Islam, to anyone they want to pray to.”

Because there was no general board meeting  scheduled  for December, some  members, including Birkett -himself absent during the vote-had said they didn’t expect that  vote to happen until January.

However, in a December 1 email, Ezell informed fellow board memebers of an emergency meeting meant “to complete decisions that have been laid over due to the lack of a quorum at recent general meetings.”
The invocation and pledge were not mentioned in Ezell’s email, and the measure has not been up for a vote at any previous general board meeting.

Lukas Herbert supplied the one dissenting vote.  But several board members who have indicated opposition to the measure were not present. Herbert suggested to Ezell that she defer the matter until the January general board meeting, when he argued attendance would be much higher than for an emergency meeting.

“This is a general meeting,” Ezell retorted, adding she had given board members ample notice of the meeting.

The Pledge of Allegiance-also a controversial element of Ezell’s initial proposal among members who indicated either they or others might not feel comfortable standing for the pledge at a time when they strongly disagreed with their government- -was not mentioned in the minutes from the November 2 executive committee meeting that were passed out at the general board meeting later that month.

However, right before the vote, Ezell instruced the board that the statement they were voting on was supposed to  include the text : “Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.”