Recollections from last Tuesday's joint City Commission/CRA meeting

Thought some of you might be interested in what happened at the joint meeting. In the end, not too much transpired of note. Commissioner Cara Jennings was absent at the beginning of the meeting, but made it there a little after 6 p.m. (the meeting began at 5:30 - maybe she thought it was 6 - who knows?) We spent most of our time going over the list of priorities that appeared on last years list - created by the former City Commission and former CRA members. We added some new priorities to the list. There was talk about preparation of a revised list of our priorities by staff and then we'll get back together later and re-prioritize the new list.

Mention was made of our contract with Hands On Consulting, but there was not a lot of discussion on the topic, other than a lot of our priorities will be addressed by this group. Commissioner Jennings repeated her issue with the $90,000 for an additional Sheriff officer in the CRA district. Other Commissioners commented that it may not be the best thing to have an officer accompany a code enforcement officer and some may be afraid of a uniformed officer walking the beat in their neighborhood. This we have heard before at City Commission meetings. When I had a chance to comment, I reminded everyone that this came from savings from going with the Sheriff's department (to the tune of $250,000) and therefore I didn't think it was an example of excessive spending, which Commissioner Jennings claimed. When I brought this up, she abruptly left the table, coming back when I was finished. I thought that was odd.

Everyone was generally civil and we will be getting back together soon to refine the list of priorities. There was also discussion about a joint meeting with the CRA, City Commission and Planning and Zoning Board to go over the recommendations from the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council report on transit oriented development. There is actually a lot more in that report than transit oriented development, as I have explained in earlier posts. The Mayor thought that meeting would be late in March.

I'll let you know when that date is set.