Tavares, FL - Nov. 16, 2001 - Twice a month I give an update to the North Lake County Tea Party which meets on the first & third Wednesday evenings at 7pm at the Tavares Civic Center, 100 E. Caroline St., Tavares. Check their website to verify details: http://www.northlaketeaparty.com/
So, here is my update, and I may add more after tonight's meeting.
Lake County Government & Board of Commissioners (see meeting agendas HERE)
- Poor Meeting Transparency Continues: Chair Jennifer Hill continues to indicate she doesn't like public input and is hiding issues from the public. She controls the agendas and meeting rules like allowing public input. Out of an average of four public meetings on Tuesday mornings each month, TWO never allow public input, but yet
The worst example was LAST week, on Nov. 8th, when the workshop had five items on the agenda that used vague, nebulous terms and no explanatory attachments on the website agenda. I just looked at the website, after submitting a public records request to get all the missing Powerpoints, and now they are on the agenda under each tab. Issues included:
- Tab1: Update on Economic Development - the current attachments is a microsoft .aptx file which won't open in any existing Office program. BCC still doesn't have their act together on the file types (it should be a .ppt or pdf file) uploaded on the website. If public input had been allowed, or the powerpoint had been provided prior to the meeting, public members could have written Commissioners or talked at the meeting about this subject, but it was impossible.
- Tab2: Staff recommended undocumented proposed 2012 Comp Plan schedule. There was no attachment and if you watch the video there are several issues that public members might have commented on if they knew WHAT was in the proposals. THIS WAS A RAILROAD JOB AND THE BOARD APPROVED THE STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS, which included a FIVE YEAR schedule to implement plan requirements. So, was your priority issue first or last in the five years - they public never had a chance to comment or know the proposals until after the board vote.
- Tab 3 - Resolution regarding a proposed mining committee for the Green Swamp Area - there were two people behind me muttering who clearly had an interest in this, but no documents were provided before the meeting and no public input allowed. This morning, Lauren Ritchie had a column questioning the make up of the committee HERE. I had the same thought, but it was to wonder why all the members were mining industry people and no just plain TAXPAYER was on the list to ensure they didn't run up the spending. Ritchie didn't comment about the lack of preliminary info or lack of public input, but that is a major issue. However, this was clearly an attempt by Hill and/or the staff to smoke the public and not provide any preliminary info.
- Tab 4: Update on East Lake County Library - Again, the delayed attachment on the website is a stupid "aspx" file which cannot be opened. Someone on the staff needs to be held accountable for uploading files that cannot be opened on home computers.
- Tab 5: This was the requested approval of a "proposed reorganizational realignment" without any attachments, so no one knew what it was about. It turned out to be some routine changes in Public Works department. Next time they don't explain an agenda item like this, I am going to send out a blog posting that the Board is being expanded to 7 members with two Tea party members being appointed by Governor Scott.
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Other County Comments:
- Kudos to the County Clerk's "Board Support" and the County Legal Dept staff for always working hard to provide transparency by ensuring accurate meeting notes are recorded and transcribed and requested documents are provided with a minimum of fuss. Board Support is a department in the County Clerk that is at most County Board meetings, and others like the North Lake County Hospital District Board meetings. They record audio files of the meetings, and then transcribe them in to very good minutes of the meetings. Thus if you need to order a copy of the audio recording on a CD for $2, you can visit them to request a copy. The Legal staff has a paralegal, Nova Atkinson, who takes public records requests, such as for contracts, and retrieves them so the public can look at or copy the documents requested. Then if you want copies of electronic powerpoints or documents shown at Board meetings, you can contact the Board Assistant, Niki Booth to request them. That is where I get the "after the fact" copies of Powerpoints that are never posted to the agenda website until AFTER the meetings. So kudos to all of the County staff that help fulfill public records and information requests and improve transparency.
- The Economic development department held a full day Economic Development Summit this last Monday, which included lunch at the Mission Inn and was $50. About 250 people were there, and the presentations were all from outside speakers which were interesting, but it was like a continuing education conference for economic development professionals. Very interesting, but no direct linkage to Lake County conditions. I was disappointed that the main economics expert spent most of his time telling jokes and talking about international and national economics and data, but not local info. It appeared he had a 3 hour speech and tried to cram it into 60 minutes. So, for people like me that thought we would see presentations directly related to local economics, job forecasts, etc. there wasn't anything, but they did talk about following up on the ideas shown by asking people to give their names to Chuck Mojock from Lake Sumter Community College, and not the County ED department. So, who knows if the interesting ideas will be followed up, and whether another summit will be held in 6-months. One speaker talked about having rapid, frequent meetings to discuss short term objectives and then report back in frequent meetings and staff didn't seem keen on that.
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School Board Issues - not much - Rick Riker covers them, and I didn't go to the meeting because I don't think anything will help them with the oncoming budget crunches or a change in Board makeup. Continued kudos to the staff running Lake Tech and the technical classes - really impressive. Employers need to find out the programs they have which might be the source for good workers in technical fields. I have done a little work to figure out whether there is a problem with slanted curriculum in books, but nothing yet. For instance, was history rewritten to make socialism more positive while downplaying the Constitution and the American culture, or to portray certain religions to be more "nice" than public information (and my own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan) indicates.
North Lake County Hospital District - The Lake County legislator's delegation had a meeting last week where Rep. Larry Metz presented his proposed bill to completely reform the District. Each side gave the expected positions, and the delegation will meet maybe next month to hash out whether they will support Metz's plan (which we think is the only good alternative), or based on their contributors list they will try to water it down or kill it. Once that vote is known, we will now who to support or not support in upcoming elections. Thanks to the Orlando Sentinel and Lauren Ritchie for supporting Metz's reforms. I separate wrote a 10 page list of reforms for Gov. Scott's Commission in Tallahassee to review Hospital Districts. Some were pretty strong, and I sent it just to the Commission members as another in a series of communications questioning the lack for Florida government and legislative oversight on District in general.
Lack of Florida State oversight and audit emphasis over many county level Districts and agencies - I am working on this. More later.
Investigations: I have several going on - two involve Constitutional officers who are not in the limelight much. Taxpayers are sending me more stuff. Then there is the investigation into illegal election campaign uses, voter fraud, Community Redevelopment Agencies (one is proposed in Sorrento), the two agencies that seem to hire people from only specific churches, and another agency where a contract was manipulated to TRIPLE the funds paid to an apparently favored candidate. There there are the public lands purchases, and one where a former County Commissioner signed the bill of sale for property purchased with public lands funds and where there the price was questionable.
Transparency of Tax Authority information and contact info - Both the Tax Collector and the Property Appraiser recently improved their website information providing contact information for taxing authorities like the North Lake County Hospital District. Before, hardly any info was available and NONE on the property TRIM notices or Tax notices. Thus, even if you saw "NL HOSP" on your Trim notice, there was NO info how to find them or what the tax was. I have a growing list of improvements to more clearly disclose contacts and websites for each tax authority.
Voter Fraud - I have found two reports on Florida voter fraud - one in Madison County, the other in the City of Daytona Beach. it can happen.
National Politics: This blog focuses on local County related government issues, but there are so many problems caused by the Obama administration I have created a growing, public document on "Reasons to Dump Obama and all Democrats in 2012" HERE, so if that is your thing, enjoy. It is sponsored by a new Super PAC (Federal level) I am involved with - I am the Treasurer.
Vance Jochim
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