CAIRO — Grady County commissioners voted recently to reappoint fellow Commissioner Phillip Drew as their public representative on the Southwest Georgia Regional Commission.

The regional commission is designed to keep local government officials informed on different grants and to help facilitate coordinated planning across the 14 member counties — a mission Drew said has been made more difficult due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Drew said the regional commission’s new virtual format, which it has used every month this year since March, has not been conducive for learning.

“You have so many people on these Zoom meetings and they start talking and people don’t mute their phones right and you get so much feedback,” he said. “It’s very hard to understand, and we were just getting a grasp of what’s going on when they pulled the plug on us.”

The body also functions as a regional planning entity for land use, environmental, transportation and historic preservation planning, according to the SWGRC website.

Meetings are held monthly, typically in Camilla, but have not taken place in-person since early this year.

“I’ve been to two meetings and the rest of them were Zoom meetings this year,” Drew said.

Regional commission members are discussing returning to an in-person format beginning early next year, though concrete plans have not been determined.

“Some of them want to go in-person and some of them still want to do Zoom,” he said.

Drew, who has served on the regional commission for the past year, volunteered himself to continue serving on the body for another 12 months.

Joe Walden also was reappointed to serve as the commissioners’ non-public appointee for the regional commission.