By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

The Levy County Commission approved several non-agenda items at its April 3 meeting and one led to an awkward exchange between Commission Chairman John Meeks and a longtime commission observer of the Board.

After an extended discussion by Commissioner Mike Joyner concerning his opposition to the state’s plans to close the dispatch center at the forestry office in Otter Creek, political watchdog Renata Cannon stood to ask for a motion.

“Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order. This requires a motion for non-agenda item,” Cannon said.

“Yes Ma’am,” Meeks said, turning his back on Cannon to allow Joyner to continue speaking.

The commission ultimately approved a motion to hear the non-agenda item despite Meeks suggestion that it might be better to obtain a consensus of the board and bring the letter back for approval in two weeks. Joyner wanted to go forward with writing a letter to Florida Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam asking Putnam to scrub plans for moving the Usher Tower dispatch center to Gainesville.

His motion to hear a non-agenda item passed. The board then approved a second motion, giving staff authority to write a letter to Putnam that would be signed by Meeks and Joyner.

Cannon is a political watchdog. She apparently felt the discussion about the Usher Tower dispatch center had gone on too long without anyone offering a motion. But she got a short response from Meeks when she asked to hear a motion on the discussion of Usher Tower dispatching. He said “Yes ma’am “and swung his chair around to listen to Joyner.

Cannon could not be reached for comment.

Meeks said he is the type of chairman who gives everyone in the audience a chance to speak but generally allows the board to discuss the issue first before inviting audience comments. He said his policy of allowing anyone to speak is probably viewed by some as borderline sloppy, but he said he wants the public to have the opportunity to comment on public policy.

Regarding the incident with Cannon, Meeks said he wanted to give Joyner a chance to finish speaking before acting on Cannon’s call for a point of order.

“I respect Mrs. Cannon. She keeps us in check. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. She’s good. I enjoy her being there,” Meeks said.

Meeks said he will speak to Cannon at the next board meeting and apologize if she was offended by the way he handled her request for a point of order.

The issue Joyner was raising wasn’t part of the published agenda for the April 3 meeting. Non-agenda items have become common at county commission meetings.

Meeks said he doesn’t like non-agenda items, but doesn’t always have control over whether they are heard. He said there are emergency items that have to be heard, such as the $73,000 payment to a private contractor that repaired the George T. Lewis Airport in Cedar Key.

The payment had been set aside in the previous year’s budget but was accidentally swept back into the general fund at the start of the new budget year on Oct. 1, according to Meeks. Meeks said it won’t happen again. But he said the contractor wanted to be paid. A non-agenda item was justified.

He disagreed with Joyner’s insistence on having the Usher Tower dispatch issue brought forward as a non-agenda item. At one point Meeks asked Joyner if writing the letter to Putnam could be approved by consensus of the board and then brought back in two weeks for formal approval. Joyner felt the matter was urgent. He felt it was dangerous not to move forward.

Joyner said the Usher Tower forestry dispatchers can act much faster and more accurately than Gainesville in sending firefighting crews to the scene of a wildfire, and he said dispatchers at Usher Tower can give farmers a burn permit much faster than Gainesville. He said local dispatchers know the farmers and can identify their location much faster. He said time is critical when weather conditions are good for burning a field.

Spotlight Founder Linda Cooper asked if farmers could be included in the letter as lending their support for keeping dispatching duties for Levy County at Usher Tower. Meeks asked if Cooper was suggesting she supported the non-agenda item. She said she wasn’t supporting the non-agenda item.

“If you had put this on the agenda farmers may have come in and put their support behind it and it would all have been a nice little group and we all would have had input,” Cooper said.

Cooper is not alone in advocating for fewer non-agenda items. Those who take the time to go to commission meetings have commented that the board is using non-agenda items for more than emergencies.

The most often heard argument against the use of non-agenda items is that the public isn’t notified of upcoming business and doesn’t have an opportunity to comment.

The appointment of Robert Lowyns, Levy County veterans service officer as an alternate to the Levy County Planning Commission didn’t have to be approved as a non-agenda item, Meeks said. The appointment could have waited two weeks to be considered by the board, but Joyner wanted the item approved as a non-agenda item.

“Until I get other commissioners to believe as I do, we don’t need this non-agenda items, I’m a sitting duck,” Meeks said. His reference to being a sitting duck means he would be outvoted.

Meeks said he won’t do what one former commissioner did when non-agenda items were introduced. He said the former commissioner voted against every non-agenda item knowing there were enough votes for passage.

Meeks said the recent Board meeting in which Tallahassee attorney Heather Encinosa of Nabors, Giblin, and Nickerson asked for permission to amend the county’s ordinance dealing with landfill revenues was another example of an issue that could have been handled differently. He said the board could have agreed by consensus to give Encinosa permission to make the necessary adjustments and asked her to bring the ordinance back for formal approval later rather than doing it as a non-agenda item.

“I think some of the things we do now as non-agenda items we can do later,” Meeks said.

But he said there are times when non-agenda items are necessary, particularly if something “tears up,” like the sinkhole that formed on a county road near Chiefland recently. The county was forced to close the road to make repairs. Meeks said if the issue had come to the Board at a meeting it would be discussed as a non-agenda item.

“I can assure you it’s not us trying to pull anything,” he said.
He said the Cedar Key Airport non-agenda item, in which $73,000 had to be paid to a contractor was legitimate, Meeks said. He said the money had been allocated for the project in last year’s budget but was accidentally swept into the general operating fund when the year closed out. He said the county commission wanted to be fair to the contractor. The contractor was waiting for his money.

“Again, you can look at it one way and you could say it’s shady, but if you look at it closer you can see it was a simple mistake,” he said.

Regular Meeting of Board of County Commissioners April 3, 2018
Posted April 8, 2018