What We Got Accomplished

Good morning everyone!

I survived the Christmas weekend chaos of Epcot. It actually was not too bad with crowds and the weather was perfect. Fun day to wrap up the Christmas break.

Back to the fun life of a business owner today.

Today, I am going to point out a few "wins" that we had on this page over the last year. I say "we" because I do not do this alone. I may be the one to speak publicly, write the Commissioners or discuss things on here, but it is a community effort for sure. People message me all the time with article ideas or tips for things to look into. It is certainly not all my doing.

Here is a list of some of the things that we got accomplished this year. Tomorrow we chat about some of our biggest stories/issues that we covered. Thursday I give everyone a New Years challenge.

In no particular order, here are some of the highlights. I will probably miss a few things, but going back these are the big ones.

• Quasi-judicial changes
• Text capturing on county devices
• Sales tax pause
• New contract/office for Crystal River attorney
• Administrative Regulation changes
• Administrator Review/Evaluation

First up... the Quasi-judicial changes.

For those not aware, land use cases in Florida have to follow a certain set of rules. For years, this county has operated under the guidelines that no one can speak to a commissioner about a project EXCEPT at the dedicated hearing.

Problem here is that is started to restrict the rights of the citizens to speak up at meetings. This came to a head in May when commissioners did not allow citizens to comment on the Southworth sand mine application that would be coming to the BOCC in August for discussion.

At this meeting in May, citizens got up to address the board and share their concerns. The board stopped each of them from speaking citing the rule that they cannot have communication about pending cases. Seems like a great rule in theory, but the problem is that this restricted citizen input at a public meeting.

We brought up this issue a few different times, even making a whole post dedicated to it. You can watch that here.

The BOCC decided to change the policy and now allows input about projects. The main change is that they now have to disclose that input prior to the meeting. You can read about the changes here. Citizens can now openly address the board on any pending case at any time they want.

So if you cannot make it to the hearing for a case you want to make a comment on, you can bring it up to them at any meeting prior to that case being heard.

Win for the citizens of Citrus county.

Text message capturing on county devices.

This stemmed from my research into the 491 issue and Right Rudder Aviation lawsuit. During the research into these, I found that commissioners like to use text messaging as a form of communication. The problem here is that unlike email, texts are not automatically captured and backed up.

This change opens the door for the texts to be captured automatically and backed up. This means that it is easy for anyone to ask to see copies of text messages. It allows for a more transparent government.

This change has been approved by the BOCC but has not yet been implemented to my knowledge as they await for the software to be added.

Sales Tax pause

This is a pretty significant one. We saw how the process was unfolding. Commissioners started off wanting to be completely hands off on the process. That morphed into each one having their own meetings and conversations about what it should be and not following the process they decided to follow.

We put pressure on them for trying to rush through a vote on the ordinance without having proper data nor following the process they set and the BOCC decided to tap the brakes on it until February/March to allow for more data. This also allows staff time to build a plan to tackle the roads.

Commissioner Holly Davis played a big role in this as part of the reason for the delay is to allow North Florida Land Trust to do a green-printing study on conservation lands... and to allow Trust for Public lands to do a statistically valid survey to test the sales tax. This will provide the board with more data to make a decision.

These provided to the county at zero tax payer cost. HUGE win there.

New Contract/Office for CR City Attorney Rob Batsel

While this will only affect a small number of people in Crystal River, we did manage to find that Batsel was operating without a contract for close to two years. No one had ever bothered to review the contract for his office and it has just been operating month to month.

We called that out here and the council promptly voted to give him a new contract. He also opened an office location this year in the city, which he mentioned he would explore doing had he been awarded the contract back in 2020.

Administrative Regulation Changes

This year has been a big year for us in holding the county to its administrative regulations. We had found at times they strayed from their policies. For instance, at one meeting they brought back an item that they previously voted against. They can do that, but not in the way they did it.

Other instances include the way that the communicate with staff. We had found many instances of the county administrator not being involved in the process and commissioners going directly for staff and providing direction. 491 is an example of this. The airport is another.

Administrator Evaluation

Speaking of the administrator, this year we made mention that the administrator has never had an official evaluation despite being on the job for 3 years in November. After year one, the BOCC changed his contract to remove the public review/evaluation that had become custom by the BOCC. It was changed to an optional in person/written evaluation process.

But the BOCC has never done it. Maybe they speak to him individually at some point to tell them what they want to see, but nothing has been documented. Yet, evaluations are common and done yearly for all other staff members by the administrator, assistant administrator or department head, depending on who the employee is.

This is common practice in all industries. Yet, the highest paid position in the county has never had a formal evaluation and has only gotten one public pay raise, yet continues to get pay raises every single year. He is now paid close to $230k a year and is set to get a raise beyond that this year.

We questioned that and pointed this out to commissioners. If all other county employees get evaluations, why not their boss? At the last meeting, the BOCC gave consensus that they would like to do an evaluation in January.

Thank you all for being involved on here and helping shape things in this county. I cannot do it without you all and it is appreciated!