The primary purpose of this final workshop meeting/workshop was to give County Staff an opportunity to make their final arguments to the County Commission members. Their goal was to justify their recommendations for the plan update. We citizens also had a final opportunity to provide opinions or suggestions.
Until now, the Commission members have been allowing the County’s Division of Environmental Lands Staff to deal with the business of sorting out the conflicts and maintain the requirements of the plan. The meeting started with a vigorous defense of the staff’s recommendation by Dr. Bruce Rinker. Details of this argument are available at the SKMP web site.
I was a little disappointed to hear Dr. Rinker speak critically about the notion of ‘compromise’. His implication seemed to be that compromise had been tried – and that it failed. This was odd, since we have worked very successfully with County staff and environmentalists to compromise on the camping issue. This caught me by surprise – much like his suggestion at the last meeting that there was a “rumor” going around that they wanted to ban camping – and that it was untrue. This would seem to minimize the many hours of dialog with environmental groups, the hours spent in advisory committee meetings, the phone calls and emails that we exchanged to build agreement and compromise for camping. I know it’s Bruce’s job to offer a vigorous defense of all their hard work. And since he had to go first, he was entitled to make anticipatory rebuttals to the criticism he was expecting. I won’t take his choice of words personally.
And maybe it’s my imagination, but there seemed to be a coordinated effort on the part of a few citizen speakers to preempt and discredit the idea of compromise. This was very curious – since there has never been any such language used at previous meetings – never. But all of a sudden, several people mention the word “compromise” as a bad thing? Very curious indeed… Nah. I’m just being paranoid.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter since, in my view, commissioners did not seem persuaded that compromise has outlived its usefulness.
And despite this curious and sudden dislike of compromise by a few, I was again struck by the kind words and positive sentiments I received from several people who did not completely agree with my compromise – but sincerely appreciated my effort to find a practical solution. And almost everyone – on all sides of the room – seemed to like the sign idea. Even if they hated the idea of a 6 month compromise, they still liked the sign.
At the end of the public comments, Commissioner Stewart commended our signage efforts and asked county staff to stay in touch with me about it. Reporters for the St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9 asked us for brief interviews after the workshop was over.
All in all, I was again pleased to see that most people seem willing to work for compromise if they believe the “other” side is making a sincere effort to contribute to the solutions. I hope that we have contributed, in a positive way, toward a meaningful and fair solution for the continued sharing of Shell Key.
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