This is Florida "Sunshine Week", and you may have noticed some Orlando Sentinel articles about Florida Sunshine laws, transparency,etc.
So, I thought I would write about County BCC SECRET Meetings not always disclosed on the Board's website:
For instance, a few weeks ago, they had a 2 pm afternoon meeting for a negotiation discussion on the Firefighter's Union new contract, and it was not listed on the agenda. I only found out about it when someone mentioned it briefly at the morning Board meeting (which was in Clermont), and then I went to that meeting, which was attended by one TV camera crew and about 10 firefighters. But, the Board was not there, and had apparent individual meetings with attorneys from the County and the Firefighter negotiators were there.
And, today I found where the Board had a SECRET meeting that among other things, discussed unplanned funding of a $100,000 FDOT program to expand the local "LakeExpress" Bus Service. But, that "Special Meeting" at 2pm was NOT listed on the website page for March 4th - instead, it said "closed meeting" and no time was posted. As a consequence, the public did not know that Jimmy Conner discovered that staff had SIGNIFICANTLY overstated ridership numbers for LakeExpress when they earlier sought funding justification ( see his March 4th blog entry HERE ). "Closed Meetings" are generally used to discuss legal or personnel issues. You can see the meeting schedule HERE.
So, the Lake County, FL Board of Commissioners has their regular meetings on Tuesdays at 9am, but they don't post the schedules or times of SECRET "Special Meetings" on the website calendar.
Here is the actual March 4th entry from the above calendar page - notice it says "Closed Session", but does not say there is ALSO a SECRET "Special Meeting":
| March 4, 2010 Closed Session |
No Agenda | View Actions | Watch Video |
But, you can click the "view actions" link and see an extremely brief synopsis of Board actions from the SECRET meeting, and the heading on the page says "Board Action" and does not mention this is a SECRET "Special Meeting" that was NOT DISCLOSED on the meeting schedule list. In this case, the Board Action memo just says:
"POSTPONED - Approval to accept a Service Development Grant from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for partial funding of Route 4 from Altoona to Zellwood."
This synopsis above doesn't mention that the discussion was about approving a $100,000 expense for expanding the local Express Bus route.
However, amazingly, the next column has a "Watch Video" link so if you had the time you could watch the video. (which has an extremely slow playback, with lots of halts)
NOW, we noticed that the meeting Schedule HERE does not have a column for the meeting minutes. You have to know to go to a different link at the top of the page for County Clerk Minutes, where you can actually find the minutes of this SECRET meeting, which in our opinion, was held so the public could not see the Board of Commissioners discuss "the Board was being asked today to take almost $100,000 out of their general fund to pay for bus ridership strictly from north Lake County to Zellwood".
The minutes are below. So, this is how the Board hides discussions from the public.
If you don't like this practice, notify your Board members (their emails and phones are HERE)
You can watch the video of the meeting HERE.
And, below is a copy of the Minutes where the Bus expenditure was being discussed:
I was not impressed with the Manager who presented info on the buses - he didn't seem to have any grasp of data to support his issue - if it was not for questions by Jimmy Conner, I think they would have voted to spend the money based purely on emotional basis. As Conner brought out, the staff previously gave UNREALISTIC and OVERSTATED rider numbers to the Board to justify Lake Express funding. I will write a separate blog entry on this later.
The Interim County Manager has a responsibility to ensure that Managers appearing before the Board use ACCURATE data and also have a grasp of justification data for spending decision requests. Watch the video and see what I mean. There is no excuse for providing spending justification data that is 100% higher than the correct data.
Recommendations regarding SECRET "Special Meetings" :
To be truly transparent, the Board of Commissions MUST:
- Post all SECRET "Special Meetings" with times on the main Meeting Calendar so they do NOT appear to be SECRET "Special Meetings" with an attempt to hide them from public view.
- Add a column to that calendar next to "Watch Videos" for a direct link to the minutes for each meeting which are posted separately by the County Clerk's Board Support group.
- Be more clear in item descriptions to describe ANY dollar impact.
vj
Agenda Topic: Service development grant from Fdot for route 4 funding
(Note: These minutes did not clearly explain what the Board was being asked to do, so I assume there was another document not provided in the minutes that explained that.- vj)
Mr. Ken Harley, Public Transportation Director, reported that the initial ridership numbers for Route 4 were projected at about 40 trips per day, but currently it was averaging over 81 trips per day.
Commr. Cadwell commented that he has observed several people waiting at bus stops along that route. He also noted that a lot of the residents who were riding the bus to the Health Department were paratransit users who would cost the County more money to serve under the paratransit system than the fixed route system.
Mr. Harley commented that he believes that the ridership of this route would continue to improve, since it was still in its infancy stage, and the more marketing they do, the higher the ridership numbers would be. He also confirmed that a lot of the riders were paratransit users, and they were targeting that market to remove as many of those users from the paratransit system and add them to the fixed route system.
Commr. Conner inquired what the ridership was during a one-year time period.
Mr. Harley responded that there were about 5500 trips for the first six months.
Commr. Conner clarified that would mean that there would be 11,000 trips during a year’s time and asked him what the figures indicating 23,000 and 31,000 represented in the Alternate Corridors Ridership Summary.
Mr. Harley explained that was one of the analyses done by the consultants, and those were the numbers for the anticipated ridership that the consultant came up with when they did the Transit Development Plan. He pointed out that his staff used numbers that were more realistic that they anticipated based on current ridership of their existing routes when they applied for the grant, and he opined that staff had better knowledge and understanding of the area than the consultants had when they put together that document.
Commr. Renick asked what the reason was for the consultant’s analysis and what it was used for.
Mr. Sandy Minkoff, Interim County Manager, explained that those figures were taken from a TDP (Transit Development Plan) document which was prepared by the MPO, not the County.
Commr. Conner commented that he specifically wanted to scrutinize their public transportation, because the Board was being asked today to take almost $100,000 out of their general fund to pay for bus ridership strictly from north Lake County to Zellwood, and he did not want to make commitments from the general fund unless they absolutely had to, because of their budget situation. He was concerned that in the past when he had asked for the projected ridership, he was given the MPO document with the higher projection, and he had previously based his vote in favor of this on the projected ridership that was in that report rather than one that was prepared by staff.
Mr. Harley responded that he believed they provided all the Commissioners with a copy of the TDP, which was the long range plan for their transportation system as a whole, and he apologized for not providing the Board with the application for the Service Development Grant.
Commr. Conner clarified that they were looking at 11,000 trips per year rather than 31,000 trips per year, and they had to decide whether that was worth the $95,000 that the Board was being asked to pay out of the general fund. He inquired about the time limit for making this decision.
Mr. Harley responded that they had to have the funding agreement submitted back to FDOT before July 1.
Commr. Conner commented that he believed it was unwise for them to make commitments out of their general fund right now until they could figure out what their priorities were as a Commission.
Commr. Renick stated that she had this pulled from the consent agenda because she was concerned that they were spending close to $100,000 before they had started discussions regarding the budget, and she felt that they would regret making such a large decision regarding general fund dollars today. She asked that this be postponed.
Commr. Cadwell commented that even though they were aware they would have to make some tough budgetary decisions, the Board had also decided that they would cut anywhere they could before they cut things that affect the public, and he believed this is something that would affect the residents. He also commented that it was an emerging system and would take a long time to grow, especially in a culture that never had that available before. He related that he sees increasing ridership more and more, and he did not want the Board to forget the importance of the public transportation system.
Commr. Hill stated that they could look at all the routes to see which ones were the viable routes and which ones could change.
Mr. Minkoff pointed out that the whole purpose of the LakeXpress was to get people off of the paratransit buses where the cost was three or four times as much per trip, and they would have to send a bus door to door to pick the paratransit riders up if they discontinued this route. He stated that they needed to keep that in mind as they evaluate the numbers.
Commr. Conner suggested that they ascertain in some documented manner rather than guess what percentage of the trips are paratransit so that they could more easily justify the expenditure that was in front of them.
Mr. Minkoff assured the Board that he would bring this back as part of the budget process.
On a motion by Commr. Renick, seconded by Commr. Conner and carried unanimously by a vote of 5-0, the Board moved to postpone the request from Community Services for approval to accept a Service Development Grant from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for partial funding of Route 4 from Altoona to Zellwood.
