Deja Vu

The Tuesday before every BOCC meeting, the agenda comes out for the public to review. This usually happens between 3pm and 5pm. I find myself checking the page every 20-30 mins or so to see when it drops. I am always excited to see what is planned to be discussed at the next meeting.

This agenda is PACKED.

I'm excited to see that my efforts are paying off. I have been very local recently on things that I think need to be addressed and this agenda has TWO of those items.

A cell phone regulation that allows those with county devices to text on those devices. More importantly, those text messages will be captured in a similar manner as emails. This allows easier public records requests and more transparency. I can easily see this one passing 5-0. Who would vote against more transparency?

The next item is a change in the county ordinance involving commissioners and their communications with staff. This would close the loophole I found and require all communication from commissioners to go through the county administrator. This reduces potential for commissioners to bypass the administrator and go straight to staff for their pet projects or other things they want worked on.

This one will be a bit contentious I think. Some commissioners like the access to staff to ask questions and be informed and do not necessarily want to wait for the process of commissioner > administrator > staff > administrator > commissioner to get that information. So I can see a 3-2 either way on this one.

More on those later this week.

Today we are talking about the Inverness Government Center (IGC) and our space needs.

Last meeting, the BOCC voted 5-0 to abandon the idea of leasing space from Inverness in their government building. The idea was to lease around 5,100 sqft from the City of Inverness and move the commissioner's offices and the county attorney's offices to the IGC as well as hosting the BOCC meetings there. This frees up the courthouse for renovations to build more facilities for the judges.

The cost came in at $112k a year for the county. All 5 commissioners agreed that was a bit pricey and voted to abandon the idea.

Yet, its back on the agenda this week.

I will give it to them. Whoever put this on the agenda is certainly sweet talking into the commissioners ears and using what they stated as concerns last meeting as an incentive to pass it this time around. Things like monitored access into the building, sheriff's presence, upgraded audio/video for meetings and secured access to offices. From a marketing guy, way to drive it home.

But I have questions.

First of all, why in the world is staff continuing to discuss this with the City of Inverness AFTER the board voted 5-0 to stop discussions with Inverness and not enter the lease? That should have been the end of it. Yet, talks continued.

Secondly, I am not an expert on Robert's Rule of Order, but since this was passed at a previous meeting, in order to reconsider it, wouldn't one of the five commissioners have to bring it back to the board and not staff? Wouldn't this need a motion to amend something previously adopted? That would allow the BOCC to discuss it further and if the amendment fails, would revert back to the original decision.

There could also be a motion to rescind I believe. This would remove the previous motion and allow a new debate and vote. However, if something happened that cannot be changed since that motion was approved, this is not an option. I do not think that to be the case here.

With either of those two options, a commissioner is required to bring it back for a vote. This is a staff item and not a commissioner item. So how are they bringing it back under a staff item?

The only thing I can think of is that its changed from the original motion. The original motion was to not move forward with Inverness lease. This item talks about signing a lease in Inverness, but also talks about getting appraisals for the purchase of property.

Perhaps that changed it enough to be something new? I am not so sure.

But point is, there was a vote on a "motion to not enter into lease agreement with the City of Inverness" and that passed 5-0. How can it come back to the board without a commissioner being the one to present it?

A 5-0 vote the prior meeting to not do it, but somehow it will be different this time at the same cost they balked at before? I get its politics, but I can't imagine opinions change that quickly to where they were not ok with $112k a year a week ago, but now are ok with it and move forward?

Will be interesting to see how this plays out.