The Chatham County Board of Commissioners has adopted a new financial and budgetary policy, though it will mean few changes in the way the county currently conducts business.

"I don’t see anything in here that’s not positive," said board chairman Tommy Emerson of the four-page policy.

And Emerson noted that the policy doesn’t change the county’s current financial and budgetary policies.

"The only thing we’re doing its formalizing it," he said.

Area cattle farmers are taking a cautious wait-and-see attitude this week after reports last week confirmed a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

Prices at Monday’s sale at Carolina Stockyards were off about 10 percent, but everyone from farmers to the stockyard owners, say that’s not nearly as big a drop as they were afraid of.

"It could have been a whole lot worse," said Joe Allen, a Randolph County cattleman who came to Monday’s sale just to see what happened.

A lot of farmers stayed home Friday, and so did a lot of buyers who generally appear at the sale.

Stockyard owners Howard and Harry Lee Horney gave farmers a letter when they arrived at the stockyard Monday morning, telling them that a lot of buyers indicated they would not be at Monday’s sale.

"Any cattle sold today, we feel, will be sold [at] at greatly reduced price," the letter read.

But a few farmers tried their luck anyway. They were pleased with the results.

An academic assignment for several students at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work may yield some practical advice for the Chatham County Board of Commissioners.

Over a period of several weeks recently, four students from the School of Social Work, as part of their school work, observed Chatham County commissioners in action at several public meetings and also interviewed some of them in an effort to gauge citizen participation in Chatham County government and propose ways to strengthen it.

The students also conducted several informal surveys of Chatham County residents to gain a clearer image of citizen participation in county government.

The students recently reviewed their data with county commissioners.

The information, said commissioner Margaret Pollard, was "very, very helpful."

The students identified a number of concerns while working from the premise that because Chatham County is changing and growing rapidly, the Board of Commissioners needs as much citizen participation as possible to ensure its decisions continue to be made in the best interest of county residents.