The Purpose of "Beyond the Agenda"

Happy Friday... I think that is what day it is anyway. I tend to lose track of days this time of year as I am in and out of the office. The BOCC meeting yesterday did not help as it was not on its normal Tuesday.

Speaking of which... Commissioner Kinnard asked for a shade meeting with commissioners and the attorneys to discuss the Right Rudder lawsuit. Apparently he has something he wants to discuss with the others, out of the view of the public due to ongoing litigation. Apparently this is somewhat recent and urgent as he did not go the normal route to get it on the agenda, rather walked it on yesterday.

I will say the new owner of Right Rudder, Zach Purvis, has sent a few emails to commissioners asking for them to meet with him and expressing desire to move on from the litigation. They also had mediation a few weeks ago, so perhaps something came from all of that.

We will see.

That said, I wanted to talk a bit about the video series "Beyond the Agenda". I shot the 3rd episode yesterday morning with our first un-elected guest. I won't spoil next week's episode (airs on Friday), but it was a good conversation surrounding growth from a different perspective than we have been having.

That brings up the purpose of the series.

When I first announced it and mentioned I would be having guests, people on social media chimed in and asked me to ask the hard questions. They wanted me to question votes, decisions, etc of those that were coming on the show.

While there is merit to that and we all know that I am not afraid to do that, that is not the purpose for this project. I wanted to attempt to do something no one has really done before... a series of videos with leaders in the community to discuss what is going on.

The county does a good job on their youtube page of doing short videos with Administrator Steve Howard and other staff members, but I wanted this to be bigger than that. I wanted input, not only from the elected leaders, but other leaders in the community as well. I wanted it to be like two friends chatting at a coffee shop or something like that. I wanted to create something where you can eavesdrop so to speak and listen in on the conversation.

As such, these are not going to be contentious. There is a time and a place for that and this is not it. I want people to learn what is going on and hear thoughts from various people... not sit and watch a debate every other week.

I get it... Those are fun and those get the attention on social media... but I feel I need to do more than that, so that is why I created this.

I do speak with the guests a week or so before we do the video and discuss what they can expect. I give them topics that we can discuss that are in their wheelhouse. I want them to have time to research things if they need to. I also ask for any topics they may want to address or that are important to them.

I tell them ahead of time that this is a loosely structured event and we will go where the conversation takes us, but we have an outline of sorts to fall back on. If they mention something that makes me think of something else, we can go that route and explore that conversation. But it will never be a "gotcha" moment or anything like that.

If I start doing that, then people will decline to do it and trust me... it gets boring watching me talk. Again, there will be a time and place for that... trust me.

Again, the idea here is discussion and talking about Citrus County. So far, I think we have done a pretty good job in doing that. Hopefully it will continue as these are fun to do and I enjoy speaking with everyone.

That said, who would you like to see on a future episode or what topics would you like to see discussed? I have some ideas, but interested in hearing what you think!

Have a great weekend!