Meeting #2: Land Use

This semester has been very difficult for me in all of my classes. Always when it seems that all hope has been lost, I find a way to walk away victorious. I didn’t realize this second meeting would be due tonight until yesterday evening. As fate would have it, there were several meetings I could attend today and still manage to complete this assignment before midnight. Since after class I am dedicated to homework, I went to the earliest one: The Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners. The meetings agenda focused on land use, something I was not really confident on or knew anything about, but it was either that or a meeting about agriculture; something I know absolutely nothing about.

The meeting began like every other public meeting I have attended: The pledge of allegiance and a short prayer. Next a member of the board presented the chairman with a “slugger” or baseball bat for his achievements as board leader in the last year. Every member of the board had signed his unique baseball bat. Immediately after, they dove right into the first issue which I’m not too sure what it was even about. They voted right away before I could make any sense what they were voting on. Now I knew I had to focus.

Luckily, their next order of business was a gentleman asking for an extra million dollars for the construction area by I75 and Bruce B. Downs. Finally! Something I could understand and certainly could relate to. A member of the board then asked the gentleman when the construction by the interstate would be completed, but the gentleman did not know. The board all voted in support of the extra money. The board went on to a couple who are migrant farmers. The man has had medical issues that make it very difficult for him to work. The couple is going through a hard time and was requesting a sign on their property. I did not understand the purpose or even what they were trying to achieve. The vote passed 6-0 for the third time in a row; I began to wonder if any of the board members would vote no on anything.

The next item on the agenda was a staff item involving an outline on something I did not understand. Two people discussed the outline as something being involved in the community and that they claimed to have a PowerPoint presentation. They did not show the PowerPoint. Instead they voted again and again the vote passed 6-0. Surprisingly, the meeting was adjourned for the time being. The meeting would pick up again later in the afternoon. I was immediately surprised because this was the shortest public meeting I had ever been to and had also not realized they were going to delay the rest of the meeting.