Ralph Niederst is new to The Villages and already sees a needed area of improvement. During Wednesday’s Amenity Authority Committee meeting, Niederst suggested changing the current format for project proposals in favor of saving both residents’ and board members’ time.
“Procedurally, it’s almost a waste of time for people in here,” said Niederst of the public comments portion of the agenda meeting. During each of the AAC’s monthly meetings, audience comments are welcomed, and members of the public may address any topic they wish without consideration of time limits.
“Hundreds of people wanting efforts from a committee with limited resources, limited budgets. I think it behooves the committee to have an annual process, where people submit their requests and [the committee] has a chance to look at it, look at the return on investment, the value, and get that out of the way,” said Niederst. After sitting through the first 30 minutes of the meeting listening to a proposal from another member of the public, Niederst suggested the need for structure and a prescreening process.
“You can’t have people just come up here randomly…You’ve got to know what’s coming to you, you’ve got to know your budget and what you can and can’t spend,” said Niederst of the current format. “Have [residents] submit a form annually…prioritize [them] with the resources you have, or you think you have, and go from there…The process of getting something in front of this committee has to be prescreened, or you’re just wasting your time and the peoples’ time.”
Village Center Community Development District (VCCDD) board member Gary Moyer agreed with Niederst’s suggestion.
“Anybody that wants to address this board on any subject has absolutely the right to do that, regardless of whether we have procedures or not. But, I certainly would agree,” said Moyer of instituting a procedure in the future.
Reporter Steve Fussell offers his take on this topic in his piece “Why Gary Moyer Is Right”:
http://villages-news.com/gary-moyer-right/