Office to make sure that there were no legal issues. He advised if anything comes up that
needs a legal opinion, he may be punting it over to the County Attorney accordingly; he made a
table explaining the reasons behind the subsidy of changes located in the document; note that
at the bottom that these revisions were suggested by the District 3 Office, but reviewed by the
County Attorney’s Office for legal sufficiency; as the Board can see, there are other minor
changes or procedural changes the Commission may want to ask about, but certainly, were not
included in the table; he is willing to go over the individual revisions; but he believes the table
does a pretty sufficient job of doing that.
Sandra Sullivan stated she thinks the people really weighed in on the will of the people in that
the communication is not being heard; there were 58 responses to this; they encouraged better
communication between the Commission and the people; that is not reflected in this; after
seeing this Agenda Item, the first thing she did was to email the County Manager and request
that the redlined version be uploaded, which it never was; and she managed to get it from
someone else. She advised there is a lack of transparency on this Item; as a person can see
with the redlined version, almost the entire Policy is rewritten; she wants to talk about how this
reflects some of the comments made by people; this process is in December when people are
busy with their holidays; it is a very difficult time; and it was asked to extend it into November or
January, or opening it up in advance to where one can put it in, and it would not be considered
until that time. She remarked as a systems analyst, she had recommended a simple thing to
add one field to that Speak Up Brevard form that would allow staff to put in their comment; at
least then the person making the suggestion would have an avenue to email the staff member
and have a dialogue, because ideas come not from one person but by collaboration; the third
thing is, and this one really gets her, it reads the County Manager shall schedule, and it used to
be an Agenda Item for the Board of County Commissioners, and it used to say to consider the
citizens recommendation as practical within the period; now it just says it comes to the
Commission for a final vote. She noted the other suggestion that was made by the people is to
have one Agenda Item for all of the Items, which could be 50 or 100 that the Board have a
workshop to where there is a dialogue, whether it is the Board or staff to at least have a
process to consider; the bottom line is the Commission does not want to hear from the people,
it is evident coming to these meetings, he or she does not care to listen to the will of the
people; and she will have more to say about that under Public Comment.
Katie Delaney commented she is opposed to this update in the Policy; this program was
intended to give the people a real process to make positive change in their community; the
change in this language is not citizen-friendly; for example, before the language said the
County Manager would solicit citizen engagement; that got removed; then, a small, but mighty
change was made, and it was very passive aggressive; the word ‘courtesy’ was added; and that
it would be a ‘courtesy’ to open up 30 days before the cutoff. She went on to say the courtesy
would have been if the County would have opened it up prior to the holiday season; she asked,
with an election right around the corner, why update this now; she noted Commissioner Tobia
mentioned why; and it is obvious it was retaliatory against one of the speakers. She went on to
say more citizens have used this program than have ever before; that should be glaring to the
Commission that citizens are not being heard, and that they are using this tool to engage with
the Board, because emails are not getting responded to; there is no other way for the people to
have his or her voice heard; the Board could have done a good-faith effort and done revisions
that were more friendly to the citizens; for example, like Commissioner Goodson mentioned,
the Board could do a workshop to speak about the proposals so the people could actually have
robust conversations around the citizens’ ideas; and instead of saying no, this does not work, it
would be nice if staff would speak with the citizens to say this is not under the County’s
jurisdiction, but maybe something else could work, that obviously, the people care about this
and what could be done. She went on by saying the County could have advertised for free by
making a post on social media announcing the program is open; that would cost nothing, it
would take two seconds, and it would show the people that the Board wants their engagement;
