The Master Plan Committee consisted of 18 members.  They were hand-picked by Mayor Oldakowski and the vast majority of them have businesses along or in the proximity to Crandon Boulevard.

I was surprised at how quickly the rest of the Council were able to digest and so quickly feel confident to vote to implement this massive proposal after just one short presentation since none of them attended one single 
meeting.  I believe that once a committee has done their job and presented a proposal to the Council, the Council then need to educate the public before voting and passing expensive projects before the public have had a chance to learn about a particular project.

You can have hundreds of public meetings, and we know we are invited, but if nobody shows up, the Council do not have an informed electorate.  In this case the Council knew that the public did not show up because the numbers were part of the agenda - yet they voted and passed the Crandon Beautification Project to be implemented immediately after it had been presented.

Decisions to spend large amounts of tax payers' money should be made by all of us.  This is a sizeable project at $8-10 million and from what I hear people want to vote on it.

Since we have Government run media on Key Biscayne and the Council is in charge of Channel 16, I asked on March 9th that all committee meetings, including the Recreation Committee meetings, be recorded and televised.  The public would then be able to follow projects as they are planned and we won't have these constant surprises, because as we have seen people just won't go to committee meetings.  I was disappointed, disturbed and dismayed by Council member Bob Vernon's flippant comments to me the other day when he said "we were elected - now we make the decisions."  That is an incredibly arrogant comment.  He also said "if people are interested they will go to the meetings".  That's not true.  People are interested and with all theelectronicequipment and advantages that bring, we want to and should be allowed to watch these meetings in the comfort of our homes.  People also have other commitments, like going to work, cooking, taking care of their kids, they are disabled, old, tired or any number of reasons and they are just not able to go.  I am very interested and I'm not able to go.  For instance when the Beautification Committee met, I was on my way to work in Miami during the time the meetings were held.  The Council should make sure committee meetings are recorded and rerun over and over like other programming on Channel 16.

Lack of information from the mainland was one major reason we incorporated and it is not a good sign that we are getting the same lack of information from our own elected individuals.  Unlike the Islander I believe our elected officials have a duty to keep people informed about what's happening in the community and what they are doing - call it spoon feeding if you like - and unlike the Islander News I do not believe our elected officials are doing everything they can to keep us informed.  In fact, I believe the opposite.

In this "Information Age" Channel 16 is a great tool for distributing information and our community is barely using this tool.  The police officer recording Council meetings could easily record committee meetings just as he is recording all other events in the village.  Or put the kids in charge of recording and televising the committee meetings.  Give them a head start until Channel 17 is up and running.  Educating kids on producing, filming, and televising will be one major reason for Channel 17 if my understanding is correct, right?

The public want to watch committee meetings now.  Don't wait for the next budget cycle and don't wait for Channel 17.  There's no reason to wait any longer - I have heard from literally hundreds of people agreeing with me on 
this issue.

Finally, in spite of the Islander News's insinuation in their editorial on March 4th as far as I'm aware the Crandon Committee did not violate the Sunshine Law.  As I said on February 24th the meetings were public, poorly 
attended, but public.  If I thought or had been given information that the Sunshine Law had been violated I would have said so

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