[Goldwingnut]

Originally Posted by Velvet

The snowbirds and snowflakes can’t even get to the meetings physically, they need a clear way of being counted too in any votes - if that process means anything to anyone. Otherwise, it’s just someone steam roading their will and trying to make it look like a democratic process.

Revenue does have to cover expenditure, but the people asked, forced to pay the taxes don’t seem to have much say on what the expenditure is spent on. I think the higher the transparency probably the higher the understanding and cooperation.

The transparency is there, under Florida Law what is commonly know as the Sunshine Law all public business is open to the public including all meetings and documents. Unfortunately few people take the time to get involved.

As a District Supervisor for the last 5 years I have been involved in the budgets for CDD-10 and the Project Wide Fund for 5 time over now. In that time there are normally 4 meetings/workshops dedicated each year for each budget. This makes about 40 +/- budget meetings that were open to the public that I was in attendance and during that time the number of people interested in the budget that showed up can be counted on one hand and the number of questions, inquiries, and complaints at these meetings by the public was ZERO!

The only meeting I've seen that anyone had anything to say about budgets was when the AAC & PWAC decided to recommend removal of the deferral cap on the Amenity Fee. What was apparent with the vast majority of the comments was that people didn't read their deed restrictions, believed the hype of realtors who will do or say anything to sell a house, didn't bother to read the information that was put out to the public, and/or have forgotten how the real world works since they have retired. The Supervisors and District Staff involved in the process don't have these luxuries and have to do their homework to make a decision that is best for the long term of the community.

The county meetings have been no different. I've been to about a dozen so far and the room is normally vacant of residents and citizens. Unless there is a pet project that someone has an interest in, people simply don't show up and don't bother to find out the agenda of what is happening. This leaves the Commissioners in a vacuum to make the decisions based on their own best judgement.

The first step to transparency is to be looking, otherwise all the transparency in the world is useless. As much a failure of the County Commissioners to plan ahead and prevent this budget crisis, it is also a failure of us as residents and taxpayers to provide them with our oversight, input, and feedback on their conduct of the everyday business of the county.