What a farce!

What an absolute farce last nights Work Session was at City Hall.
We walked in a few minutes late to hear Commissioner Mattick verbally attacking Commissioner Stoltzfus in yet another of her attempts to discredit him. What however was so low on this occasion was that she was repeating what had been a private conversation between them.

And then we were treated to more of the same and by that I mean builders/developers/architects/Manatee county commissioners who support PAR suddenly appearing at this meeting to offer a wealth of experience. Mayor Barford ensured that by the end of the meeting both Tom Aposporus and Gene Aubry would be on the Committee of five. That despite the fact that in fact each commissioner was supposed to elect someone to represent them. And did I miss something? At the last Commission Meeting the Mayor suggested that Commissioner Stoltzfus form a committee which he did. She also asked him to put Sgt Turner and Bob Welch on that committee which he did. A week later she called him and asked him to disband that committee. So I guess 'they' have all had a chance to reconsider who would be most useful to them on a committee. And just to give anyone who wasn't there a flavor of what is to come - there is already mention of relaxing some of our parking rules again! That in a City where the parking guidelines are less than almost everywhere else already!

It was depressing to see the manipulation which continues. Much work lies ahead. Not least of which is to check and re-write all the LDR's that have been changed in the last two years. As Tom Turner so rightly said it is just a word here and a word there. The result is that we now have LDR's which are so ambiguous that the developers are making a mockery of them.