New Commissioners MIA

With all of the discussions of a new hospital that is needed in the Poinciana area moving forward, and the possibility of the area becoming its own city, we would have expected to see the new District 3 County Commissioner, Brandon Arrington basking in the glory of media spots re-capping campaign promises and other new found ideas brought about by his time served on the commission. Best case, we would have hoped that we would be hearing from the public that he was ignoring the media and was hard at work helping to fix the problems of his district, but it seems that Commissioner Arrington has disappeared on those he was elected to represent. This is probably because of all of the bad news coming out of his district despite some of the other 'positive' things being pushed by residents down there. The only note worthy communication we could find from Commissioner Arrington was in a e-mail received from one of our readers with a newspaper clipping in-which Commissioner Arrington spends a large amount of time discussing the importance that residents should place in celebrating Valentines Day. Maybe getting elected was the easy part?

This silence is not owned by Commissioner Arrington alone. Commissioner Hawkins and Commissioner Harford have also seemed to enjoy their limited engagement into the issues facing Osceola County residents. While all three commissioners jumped on board a politically popular idea of creating a 'Buy Local' policy that removes price protection barriers for local taxpayers, we have heard little else come forward in the shape of solid plans on how to handle the budget crisis without raising taxes on a public that cannot afford even the slightest bump. Changing meeting times or opening calendars are not the problems commissioners were elected to fix. Creating isolationist policies that are already starting to strain relationships with governments and large project managers outside of our county were also not good first steps. While the discussion of these ideas were/are important, and action was needed, the discussion of possible problems/backlash was lacking. While the WayneWho staff does applaud the small strides that have been made, we believe the grace period is over and it is time for the real work to begin. This means that real public issues should be discussed and the discussions on the importance of Valentines Day should be left to Ann Landers or the editors at the News Gazette.