Public Trust?

The public's trust seems to have been strained over the last month, or so, with the Hernando County government. Many important news articles have flashed across our local headlines which have everyone concerned about the quality of life in our county. Headlines like, the hiring of a new administrator, to the problems with the county jail under the management of CCA. Some of the concerns are as minuscule as the county telethon participation this year. But the question is, "Where are our county commissioners?" The Hernando Board of County Commission's scheduled meetings have been very sparse since the end of last year, and will continue that way through March. The BOCC is averaging two regular meetings a month, and one monthly land-use meeting. Nice work for part-time but who does John Q. Public contact in the event a problem needs to be resolved by this elected body? To be fair, an emergency meeting was called by the BOCC chairwoman for tomorrow morning to approve the new administrator's contract. Its short-notice, but it is a meeting of BOCC, even though it only has one agenda item. Aside from this emergency meeting tomorrow, the BOCC has only two regularly scheduled meetings (each) for February and March and one land use meeting (for each month). It also appears that Hernando County is operating on cruise control at these meetings since most of county business is approved on the consent agenda, that produces very little discussion by our commissioners. The BOCC's job classification is for part-time work but this is stretching the term "part-time" just a little bit. Trust in our local elected officials depends on an open door policy with them at the helm, not government employees making critical decisions. Maybe its time that the BOCC re-think their position, and reinstate the their meetings for the second Tuesday of each month.