County Needs Action, Not Words, Committees

Surfing the boob tube one afternoon a few days ago, I stumbled across a local station televising a Hernando County Commission workshop.

The "show" was an unbelievable yawner, recalling how a famous sportswriter described a boring sailboat race some 75 years ago - "like watching grass grow," he moaned.

The British had been planning the ultimate in TV reality shows a few years back. It was to be called, "Watching Paint Dry." The British Broadcasting Corp. vetoed the concept as "too dull." Typically British understatement.

Observed a TV spokesman, "After watching paint dry, where can you go next?" But, he granted, "It would have been good family entertainment; no four-letter words and no sex."

That's about all Hernando County's government TV channel (digital channel 622) could offer in defense of screening the commission workshop: It was a safe family show. But government TV could also use some heavy-handed, hard-nosed editing.

There was no reason to show two hours of commissioners silently writing on multi-colored "post-its" or ambling aimlessly around a makeshift classroom and doodling on whiteboards. Occasionally trying to own up to intelligent life, they'd still be hard to hear. They'd stand with their backsides to the camera and microphone or bow their heads and mumble inaudibly.

I realize Florida has some pretty effective "Sunshine" laws. We "foot folk," or voters, are afforded access to any commissioners' meetings, among other things. I'm not advocating censorship, by any means. Common sense would do. It might be enough to leave the door of the meeting room ajar, sometimes. We don't need to televise every minute detail.

This commission workshop session was not structured to be televised. Ever. Well, unfortunately, maybe it was.

What I witnessed was a frightening demonstration of how to create more bureaucracies and how to get even less accomplished in Brooksville. In other words, by referring all hot topics to committee to be discussed to death, hopefully never to resurface at a regular meeting of the whole commission.

Committees may be de rigueur in Tallahassee and Washington, but in relatively tiny Brooksville? Give me a break! We shouldn't be able to afford more layers of costly bureaucracy in a county whose entire population is only 160,000.

The workshop was originally billed as an opportunity for the five commissioners to set some goals for themselves and for the county as a whole. They missed the mark, opting instead to regurgitate strategies and measures that, for the most part, had already been discussed by the full commission.

These items included cost savings maneuvers, public transportation issues (specifically, THE Bus), making permitting processes more effective, rubbish collections (shouldn't public works already be on top of this?), and a "friendlier" code enforcement (not really a goal but part of a strategy).

Oh, and one commissioner wanted to know, almost as on queue, how Hernando County could get its "greedy" (my word) hands on a hefty slice of that juicy economic stimulus pie the feds keep waving under our noses.

The only commissioner to come even close to identifying a goal was newly-elected James Adkins. He pleaded for improved communications with the taxpayers. Adkins suggested a simple website, "www.whospentthemoney.com."

I've found, in garnering support for any project, you need to communicate goals and strategies to any number of publics, both internally and externally. That would include amounts allocated and what was actually spent.

The county's guiding principle, however, should be "actions, not words."