I arrived at today’s public meeting about intersections expecting the same thing I experienced my last public meeting. What I found was that even though this meeting was a lot smaller than the recognition meeting I attended before it was a lot more lively and interesting.
Unlike the other meeting this one was about tax payer’s money and construction in their backyard. The crowd was pretty diverse, politicians, heads of neighborhood associations and just everyday folk wanting to know what’s going on.
I walked into the rec center off of North Dale Mabry and Northdale Blvd, which is one of the intersections they are talking about redoing, and noticed poster boards with Google image type pictures depicting what the roads would look like. I thought this was a great idea to have the resident’s visual the changes instead of just telling them about it. The other intersection in question was North Lakeview Drive South and North Dale Mabry. There were also poster boards of this intersection next to the other ones.
This particular meeting was in what they call the Preliminary Design and Engineering Study, which in laymen’s terms means that they are proposing this to the public and trying to convince them to vote on it. The first intersection had 4 choices and the second had 3. The country and contracting company is trying to figure out which choice the residents would prefer over the other.
The contracting team put on a video for the residents at the meeting. I thought this video was top notch and made me feel like doing this construction was a great idea….I DON’T EVEN LIVE HERE. That’s how convincing I felt this video was. It had great graphics and details, it told exactly what was going to be done and how much it would cost. At least that is what I thought…I’ve been around enough politics to know not everything will be disclosed.
After the video, the head of the contract team offered the attendees of the meeting to get up and look at the poster boards and ask questions to any of the staff located at the boards.
Although some might not agree I thought this meeting was very interesting. It made me think towards the future and if I would be attending a meeting towards such a topic. Being forced to attend public meetings, it made me realize that these are important and informative meetings that someday I will want to go to.
Quote of the meeting: “There will be a no construction options.” That was replied with clapping from the attending residents.
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