Making Sausage, Part I

Most people that enjoy sausage don't really want to watch what goes in it...our recent budget fight was messy, a lot like making sausage, and now it is all going to be published (or at least the most messy parts)

The Escambia Board of County Commissioners recently settled the sheriff's budget appeal, and now that this is behind us, all of the transcripts of our 7 shade meetings are a public record.  Today, board members received the following email from attorney Alison Rogers:

"Commissioners,

Just a note to let you know that Jim Little of the PNJ requested and has now received copies of all seven of the Sheriff’s budget appeal shade meetings.

 Please do not email back, but do get with me if you have questions.

Alison"

So this means within the next couple of days, one or more news articles will appear, and more than likely some of the more choice exchanges from these transcripts will be published void of the context that generated the exchanges.  In an effort to get ahead of this, I will be publishing all of them, in their entirety, so citizens can read them for themselves if they so choose--in their entirety.

It is like the old saying, these deals are like making sausage--it's messy, stuff goes in, stuff comes out, and most people "don't want to know" how the sausage was made.  The internal deliberations of the sheriff's staff will never come out--so in some respects this is not fair.  But oh well, at least we got the deal done and we have a 4-year deal.

But because we are a public body, subject to open meeting laws, all of our private deliberations are now fair game for those who want to look.   So I'll start out with this one first, the Shade Meeting of the Board from October, when we were just starting to formulate a strategy.  Lots of frank dialogue in here, lots of interesting conversations.... (and full disclosure--I wouldn't publish these if they weren't going to be coming out in dribs and drabs void of context in the media....)