Does anyone really care?

About once a year someone complains that the Charlotte County Board of Supervisors holds afternoon meetings to restrict citizen involvement. About every two years a board will vote to hold evening meetings for that reason.

Long-time board members and those of us who have a historical perspective already know that few members of the public will attend regardless of the meeting time. Excluding the press and those who are required to attend there are three citizens who regularly attend the meetings. Those three attend regardless of the meeting time. As a point of fact, the Zoning Board did not have a quorum at the recent meeting in spite of the fact that a public hearing was planned.

The only entity that would benefit from evening meetings is this newspaper. As evening meetings are after our competitor’s press time we would have an advantage in reporting a week before them.

Every few months someone will move to the county or a local will wake up and decide to become involved. Historically, they will quit attending in three to six months, again regardless of the meeting time.

Then whenever there is a difficult issue to address a small but vocal group will appear to oppose the board. In the case of the recent courthouse issue the taxpayer saw the costs double thanks to that group. No one was happy with the new location but the will of the judges and the small group was done. As usually happens, they promise to help, but as soon as the issue ends they vanish.

I fully support community involvement. Many of us let our supervisors know what we think on a regular basis. What I have a problem with is one or a few citizens demanding a change especially when they don’t have the complete information.

On another note, I often hear citizens demand an answer after addressing the board in the citizen’s comment period. Almost all of Charlotte’s supervisors will answer a question one-on-one but seldom in a meeting. There are two reasons for this. One is that one supervisor cannot speak for the board. Another is the time constraints. I have been to board meetings in other counties where the comment period lasted hours.

Recently one citizen has been complaining that there are no transcribed verbatim minutes of the board meetings. CD’s of the meetings are available at the reasonable cost of one dollar. Until last month there had been no request for a CD with the exception of the ones I requested for many years.

If no one shows up for the meetings, if no one requests the CD, does anyone really care what happens in detail? Why should the county spend the money for a transcript that no one wants?