By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
A mistake by a Levy County weekly newspaper in failing to publish county commission legal advertisements on time for two public hearings has the board thinking about other options.
The Levy County Citizen is a blend of two former weekly newspapers, the Chiefland Citizen, and the Williston Pioneer Sun News, and is relatively new to the county.
Commissioners were forced to reschedule two planning and zoning public hearings set for Tuesday’s board meeting to Jan. 18 “due to an oversight at the local newspaper,” the commission agenda said, referring to the Citizen.
The hearings were listed on the agenda along with an explanation of what went wrong.
“This was noticed to the surrounding owners via signs and letters to be presented at the January 4, 2022 board meeting, but because the ads were not run, it has to be postponed to January 18, 2022.”
Hectus tossed out her idea of using the Gainesville Sun to publish the board’s legal ads rather than the Levy County Citizen at the meeting. The board gave her the green light to explore that possibility.
She will work with County Attorney Nicolle Shalley and Procurement Coordinator Alicia Tretheway to determine what legal options, if any, the county has for switching to a new publication for legal ads.
Chapter 50 in Florida Statutes appears to provide counties some leeway in choosing a publication that is generally available to the public and meets certain criteria for publishing legal advertisements and public notices.
But the devil is in the details. Shalley will ultimately decide what is legally permissible.
Tretheway said she already has contracts with the Gainesville Sun.
Hectus remained composed as she discussed the two postponed public hearings, but she also appeared irritated by what happened, which is rare for the planning director.
“The Levy Citizen newspaper failed on our ad and we couldn’t meet the deadline over the holidays. It really messed up our schedule,” Hectus said. “Aggravatingly enough, after discussion with Nicolle Shalley, we decided to readvertise the ordinance and that would lead to new public hearings. I apologize to anyone in the audience that came for them. We tried to get notices out as soon as we could, so we will be seeing these two items on the 18th. It’s frustrating when the newspaper change (inaudible). Alicia Tretheway (Ali) and I talked. It’s been one frustrating thing after another.”
Hectus said the postponement of two public hearings was more than just awkward. She said in weekly newspapers the county can advertise only once a week. With a daily, the county has an opportunity to correct a mistake the next day.
She said the Gainesville Sun is generally circulated in Levy County through the use of newspaper stands in stores.
“Maybe that’s an alternative we can go to because I can’t keep doing this to the applicants (inaudible),” she said. “So, I stand here today to let you know the applicants were not happy. I felt worse for the folks we knew would be coming out.”
Commissioner John Meeks agreed the county needed to explore other options.
“We need to do a better job of serving the people,” Meeks said. “I would request we research that.”
Meeks said he knows of several bills circulating in the Florida Legislature that would give local governments options for publishing legal advertising other than newspapers.
“Several bills have been filed this year in the Legislature about electronic notification and getting away from print. Hopefully, the print lobby is not strong enough to turn that back,” Meeks said. “We can do a lot of things digitally and we’re not at the mercy of them.”
Hectus said when she called the Levy County Citizen about the ads failing to be published by the deadline, they told her she had also missed the deadline for re-running the ad.
“After screaming and going up the ladder, they agreed to run it on the 18th,” she said. “They were going to delay until February. I said we’re not going to have the impact. The fact that we need to find something that runs more frequently (a daily newspaper) would help us when something was messed up. We could turn around and run it again and not have to wait a week or two weeks to make deadline.”
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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting January 4, 2022; Posted January 4, 2022
