Public Hearing cancelled because commissioners aren’t showing up to work

No need for citizens to attend the Public Hearing on May 29 6:00 pm

Tonight’s Public Hearing on the Ruskin Community Plan code amendment will have to be rescheduled—at the very last minute—because the county just now realized that we can’t get enough of our highly paid County Commissioners to show up for work today!

This public hearing was scheduled months ago, and many citizens have made plans to attend and speak to our commissioners about this issue that is important to us—but most of our commissioners will not be there! And they are just figuring this out right now. As late as 3:00pm yesterday this hearing was still ON—county staff emailed me an updated agenda of the hearing at 3:08pm yesterday, but today it’s suddenly OFF.

Apparently, many of our County Commissioners don’t have enough consideration for us citizens to figure out their schedules ahead of time and let us know that we needn’t bother making plans to attend this public hearing ourselves. They don’t care that we are planning to drive from Ruskin or Keystone to downtown Tampa in rush-hour traffic to speak to them about an issue that matters to us—the Ruskin Community Plan specifically, and all Community Plans in general.

They don’t care enough about our time, and they don’t care enough about our Community Plans to either show up tonight and take action, or give us all proper notice that they would be rescheduling this Public Hearing.

These commissioners ARE showing up for the hearing:
Sandra Murman, Victor Crist, Al Higginbotham

These commissioners ARE NOT coming in to work:
Ken Hagan, Mark Sharpe, Kevin Beckner, Les Miller

Unfortunately, we need 4 commissioners for a quorum, so the 3 commissioners who DO show up will have to simply continue the hearing to a later date. Once they figure out when they are going to get around to holding this Public Hearing, I will let you all know.

If you’re as disgusted by this irresponsible conduct as I am, please contact your commissioners and let them know that their constituents, who pay their salaries, expect better of our “leaders.”

For more information about this hearing, with links to more info, see this previous article.

UPDATE • posted June 4: This Public Hearing has been RESCHEDULED. The new date is:

FINAL Public Hearing: Land Development Code Amendments
— Ruskin Plan Guidelines amendment: #14-0474

Thursday, June 12, 6:00 pm.
2nd floor boardroom, County Center (the pink glass tower)
610 E. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL 33602 (view map)