Waton County BCC Meeting Agenda & Notes Sep 9, 2014

[Bob Wells]

Also of key note on the agenda is under Sara Commander, She is nominating Robert Nelson from Defuniak to be on the TDC.

1. According to his bio on the supervisor of elections office he has no college degree.
2. He is not a bed tax collector.
3. He is not even a resident of Sara's district, he is a close personal friend.
4. He was defeated soundly in every office he has run for. He came in fourth in the 2012 commissioners race because of his views and lack of education.
5. I've never seen him at a TDC meeting, which I attend regularly.
6. This is nothing but a political favor.

I asked someone who knows him well enough to have visited his house, and I was informed he hung super hero action figures from his ceiling as decorations. If you were picking a board to advise you on what to do with millions of dollars of yearly income of your own money, would you really pick or nominate him? We have over 30 million dollars of TDC money in the bank. This appointment is a political favor and can't possibly be in the TDC's best interest given the performance of past TDC's in both Walton county and surrounding counties. You can't put underqualified people on boards with this kind of responsibilites, if you want professional results, put educated professionals on your boards and this will happen.

Also the last item under quasijudicial items is another person trying to change the Future Land Use Map from 2-1 conservational residential (low density housing of two houses per acre) to Neighborhood Infil.(Much higher density and other uses permitted.) The BCC continues to grant variances from the Land Development code and other adopted plans to the point there mine as well be no rules. Notice this one is the last item on the agenda and will get approved at 9 o'clock at night when everybody has left and the BCC isn't paying attention because they have been in the chair since 2 o'clock and just want to go home, not discuss the issues.

7. Lula Cone Peterson-SSA-14-005 - Project number 14-00600002 is being reviewed by Tim Brown. This is a small scale amendment application submitted by ECM, requesting to change the future land use designation of 2.516 acres from Conservation Residential 2:1 to Neighborhood Infill. The project is located on the south side of Louva Lane at the intersection with Deno Drive and is identified by parcel number(s) 02-3S-20-34160-000-0230.

I hate to be negative on my first post, but as a long time lurker of SOWAL I am fed up with what I see going on in local government. It's time to get some public participation at these meetings so we can get the commissioners to stop making stupid mistakes. They seem to need public guidance to move in the right direction and we've got to give it to them. I think we have to straighten out our local government before we start figuring out how to get State government, the Senate,Congress and President to give us better representation and move this country forward in a positive direction.

I pledge to start getting up to the podium and saying something about all the stuff that keeps occuring over and over again at these meetings and I also plan to get at least one neighbor to come with me. What will you pledge to make Walton County a better place? Every little bit helps.

What motivated me to write this was learning that one of the most vocal leaders of the "NO" vote on the school referendum, had his daughter register to run for superintendant less than two weeks after the vote. I don't believe it had anything to do with giving our kids a better education, it was simply county politics directly affecting the children of this county. Thanks to the poster of that thread, I verified it with the supervisor of elections office and wanted to throw up.

Nice first post. Would like to point out that she has run for that position before so his lack of support doesn't surprise me. At the same time, and I know this will raise some hair on folks necks, but why is it that those who were opposed to the referendum did not as fervently believe that their cause was just as true as ours was. To think ours was the only or correct way is a pretty arrogant attitude. I see it a lot in many of the campaigns I follow. Did I agree with the no's position, I did not buy into their argument, but it was and is not any less valid in my view.

 

[Danny Glidewell]

Patriot Games, I totally agree with you on the subject of variances and ignoring the code. But Bob Wells has a great point about the referendum. Both sides had valid points why denigrate the position that you do not agree with? As far as Robert Nelson, whether you agree with him or ever voted for him is immaterial. And who cares what superhero decorates his home? What is material is that he has a long history of community involvement and has served on county boards in the past. He does offer a perspective that has long been missing from the TDC and will broaden the experience and view point of that board. Plus he is very savvy regarding tech issues and so might can help the TDC from needing to spend 200,000 every 2 years or so to fix their webpage. If he can help save the taxpayers those funds alone, I would say this is a great appointment.

As far as Mr. Nelson's education, or lack thereof, effecting his race for commissioner two years ago, I know that 2 of those who finished ahead of him, including the winner, do not have college degrees either. So I doubt that education was much of a factor in that race. But all three are hard-working, intelligent people. That race had several quality people running. As is often the case, the deciding factor was who raised the most money. That was also the cleanest county race in memory. Every one of those candidates were to be commended for that.

 

[Patriot Games]

Danny,
If you want to defend Nelson then please address all six points. This is a political favor and LOTS of people are tech savvy around here. As far as the boards he has served on, he quit the code enforcement board so he must not be too involved or concerned about Walton county. I still say we have far more qualified citizens to serve than him and the fact he is not in sara's district speaks volumes about politics. Still never seen him at a meeting.
I stand by post about the superintendants race and wonder will you danny be at the meeting at 9 o'clock tonight to protest the variations and lack of respect for the plan that was put into place to preserve Walton County? I suspect the answer is no, because I personnally have never seen you advance to the podium to ask "What the heck are we doing here"? Apathy rules in my opinion. I voted for you in the last election because I felt you were the all around best candidate and showed little political affiliations. I stand by my decision to vote for you and your post does not change my decision to vote for you. (I'm not that petty) but I am disappointed you support a political favor appointment. Danny you were the victim of a split the vote race, if you had run Mrs. Jones 1 on 1 you would have easily won as well as raised significantly more money to get your message heard. As savvy as you seem to be you didn't learn the lesson that Bob Hudson and Alan Osborne learned in 2008. The developers and insiders in Walton County can always buy or recruit about 33% plus or minus of the vote. All they need is mulitple candidates who don't realize this and their man or woman is in. This won't change until we have a referendum that a candidate must recieve 51% of the vote to be declared a winner and the top two vote getters have a runoff to see who the people really want. People in this county have been elected on less than 30% of the vote and that surely doesn't represent the peoples wishes when 70% of those who voted wanted something else.

 

[Zebraspots]

Some of the items listed seem rather petty and trivial.

The two big questions for me are: 1) why would someone from north of the bay and 2) who is not a bed tax collector be nominated for the TDC?

There are literally thousands of more qualified candidates.

 

[Bob Wells]

Danny,
If you want to defend Nelson then please address all six points. This is a political favor and LOTS of people are tech savvy around here. As far as the boards he has served on, he quit the code enforcement board so he must not be too involved or concerned about Walton county. I still say we have far more qualified citizens to serve than him and the fact he is not in sara's district speaks volumes about politics. Still never seen him at a meeting.
I stand by post about the superintendants race and wonder will you danny be at the meeting at 9 o'clock tonight to protest the variations and lack of respect for the plan that was put into place to preserve Walton County? I suspect the answer is no, because I personnally have never seen you advance to the podium to ask "What the heck are we doing here"? Apathy rules in my opinion. I voted for you in the last election because I felt you were the all around best candidate and showed little political affiliations. I stand by my decision to vote for you and your post does not change my decision to vote for you. (I'm not that petty) but I am disappointed you support a political favor appointment. Danny you were the victim of a split the vote race, if you had run Mrs. Jones 1 on 1 you would have easily won as well as raised significantly more money to get your message heard. As savvy as you seem to be you didn't learn the lesson that Bob Hudson and Alan Osborne learned in 2008. The developers and insiders in Walton County can always buy or recruit about 33% plus or minus of the vote. All they need is mulitple candidates who don't realize this and their man or woman is in. This won't change until we have a referendum that a candidate must recieve 51% of the vote to be declared a winner and the top two vote getters have a runoff to see who the people really want. People in this county have been elected on less than 30% of the vote and that surely doesn't represent the peoples wishes when 70% of those who voted wanted something else.

Great point. I am not sure the statement before the highlighted one is true because I think a lot more money will be spent to elect a candidate and would venture that things would be nastier than already happens currently.

 

[Patriot Games]

When I meant buy, I mean they give a load of money that leads to lots of signs and advertising. I have heard so many candidates talk about how concerned they are about this county in the past and most of them have one thing in common. I've never seen or heard of them at a meeting until they decided to run for office and they never state their opinion at a podium when it counts and the decisions are being made. I'm done with my rant and back to being a lurker.

 

[Misty]

What is material is that he has a long history of community involvement and has served on county boards in the past.

Care to elaborate which boards those were?

He does offer a perspective that has long been missing from the TDC and will broaden the experience and view point of that board.

And what might that be?

Plus he is very savvy regarding tech issues and so might can help the TDC from needing to spend 200,000 every 2 years or so to fix their webpage.

About the only thing Robert Nelson can bring to that board is he does have computer experience.

 

[Danny Glidewell]

Danny,
If you want to defend Nelson then please address all six points. This is a political favor and LOTS of people are tech savvy around here. As far as the boards he has served on, he quit the code enforcement board so he must not be too involved or concerned about Walton county. I still say we have far more qualified citizens to serve than him and the fact he is not in sara's district speaks volumes about politics. Still never seen him at a meeting.
I stand by post about the superintendants race and wonder will you danny be at the meeting at 9 o'clock tonight to protest the variations and lack of respect for the plan that was put into place to preserve Walton County? I suspect the answer is no, because I personnally have never seen you advance to the podium to ask "What the heck are we doing here"? Apathy rules in my opinion. I voted for you in the last election because I felt you were the all around best candidate and showed little political affiliations. I stand by my decision to vote for you and your post does not change my decision to vote for you. (I'm not that petty) but I am disappointed you support a political favor appointment. Danny you were the victim of a split the vote race, if you had run Mrs. Jones 1 on 1 you would have easily won as well as raised significantly more money to get your message heard. As savvy as you seem to be you didn't learn the lesson that Bob Hudson and Alan Osborne learned in 2008. The developers and insiders in Walton County can always buy or recruit about 33% plus or minus of the vote. All they need is mulitple candidates who don't realize this and their man or woman is in. This won't change until we have a referendum that a candidate must recieve 51% of the vote to be declared a winner and the top two vote getters have a runoff to see who the people really want. People in this county have been elected on less than 30% of the vote and that surely doesn't represent the peoples wishes when 70% of those who voted wanted something else.

Thank you for the vote and support. I agree with your analysis of the election. I knew going in it would be difficult to beat two well financed incumbents and that a 4 man race is difficult to say the least. But I felt neither of the other candidates represented my vision for Walton County and that the 2 who had been there had done little to help matters. I gave it my best shot and came up short. The only regret I have is the outcome. As far as speaking at meetings, most of the time there are dozens of speakers repeating the same views. I certainly don't mind speaking my mind if need be.
I am not defending Mr. Nelson or Ms. Commander. They are certainly capable of doing that themselves. I was pointing out that Mr. Nelson is not as unqualified in my opinion as you apparently believe. The point about not living in the district does concern me. I did not like it when Kenneth Pridgen did it and it would be hypocritical to defend it now. The other items are sort of "it is what it is" sort of things. Commissioner appoint friends and cronies to boards. Another example of elections having consequences.

 

[Danny Glidewell]

He does offer a perspective that has long been missing from the TDC and will broaden the experience and view point of that board.


And what might that be?

Misty, he owns a small business that provides services to bed collectors. That is certainly a unique perspective and one that should be represented in the decision-making process.

 

[Bob Hudson]

Robert is being appointed to the "NORTH WALTON ADVISORY BOARD" not the full TDC board. It is my understanding he is being appointed to fill the seat vacated by Gus Andrews.