The Lake County Commission needs to drastically change their resistance to allowing public input at meetings.
For three years, I have been going to School Board meetings and workshops, and then started going to the separate County Commission Board meetings or watching them on TV for the last two years.
This next paragraph is an extract from the County Commission website describing weekly meeting formats and "encouraging" public input, but then saying it might not always be allowed:
"The Lake County Board of County Commissioners meetings may consist of several components, including work sessions, discussion agenda items (departmental business), consent agenda items and public hearings. Lake County residents are encouraged to attend the meetings and to speak at public hearings. The Board normally meets in regular sessions the first, third and fourth Tuesday of each month. Special meetings and/or work sessions may be called as necessary. While public comments may not be taken at these work sessions, the public is invited to attend."
One major difference between the School Board and the County Boards is their approach to transparency, or allowing the public to speak and publishing info for the public to review.
For instance, the School Board allows
public input of 3 minutes before any line item on a meeting agenda, as well as public input at the end of the meeting. However, the County Commission does not. Chairman Welton Cadwell doesn't allow public input for line items on the agenda, but only at the end of the meeting. And, most recently, he didn't even allow public input at the end of the meeting, so no one could comment about the planned EDC party in Bella Collina, or the surprise expenditure request for a $230,000 assault vehicle that was not in the budget. And, at a meeting about 1 month ago, the Board discussed and approved the $1.2-million 4 year contract with Metro Orlando EDC without allowing public input before the Board approved the contract (I even specifically asked Welton to do so, and he refused).
Now, the most recent elimination of public input might be partly my doing, because at a previous meeting I used public input to discuss the issue of the EDC contract, then gave a book on Drucker's Management techniques to the Interim County Manager, Sandy Minkoff (implying the County didn't understand current Management methods), and THEN announced I was running against Linda Stewart for County Commissioner. I admit I was a little over the top, and subsequently sent an apology letter to the Board.
But, none of these reasons should justify preventing public input.
Has Welton been in office too long, and Chairman too long, and just doesn't want to listen? Or is there something deeper involved.
For instance, the Board won't initiate performance audits of operations by the County Auditor (who works for the County Clerk), and recently Minkoff canceled an appearance at an audit exit conference with the County Auditor over an audit of the Employee Services department. There has been a lot of controversy over the capabilities of the Employee Services department, and there methods of hiring, firing, promoting and demoting.
And, in the future I will discuss the need to have very public, advanced notices of meetings. Not all workshops are publicized clearly. And, some Board meetings are not publicized adequately. For instance, the recent Board meeting held on a Tuesday morining in Clermont was not even on the Board of Commissioners website on the prior Friday, and the agenda posted on the website was extremely limited and did not provide handouts to be reviewed before the meeting.
There really do seem to be a lot of management type issues in the County, and preventing public input, limiting notice of meetings, etc. is not a solution.
vj
