Don’t Blink Or You Might Miss The Meeting!

     The Citizens who pay attention to what the Fort Lauderdale City Commission does, or doesn’t do, have had to pay close attention lately. 

     That’s because the meetings have been so short, that if those Citizens take a bathroom break, they’ll probably miss the whole meeting!
 

                                     
                                                         Ready to Jump and Run?

        Yesterday’s Conference Session, the twice monthly daytime meeting where Commissioners are supposed to discuss the City’s problems and bring forward new initiatives, lasted only 32 minutes, probably a City record. Most of the Commissioners spend more time commuting to the meetings than that.

     The evening meeting, a formal meeting called the Regular Meeting, where the Commissioners vote on Ordinances and Resolutions and hold Public Hearings, lasted only 47 minutes. The Regular meeting two weeks ago lasted only 45 minutes!

     At yesterdays rate, if they just attended the meetings, the Mayor and his Commissioner’s  salaries would work out to be about $1590.00 an hour.

     Some City watchdogs point to the brevity of the meetings as evidence that the Commissioners are not tending to the City’s needs, but just rushing in for a short meeting and leaving the City’s’ bureaucrats to take on all the heavy lifting. They say that there are multitudes of issues facing the City that need full-time attention from the Policy Makers, not dash-in,dash-out diplomacy. 

     Some others say the brief meetings are a political ploy to keep anything controversial from coming up until the next City election in the Spring, when three of the five on the City Commission will be term limited out .

     Still others say they are satisfied with the short meetings, and prefer the status quo until the new Commission is elected in the Spring.