By Tracy Dishman, Editor
On Monday night, Sept. 28, I sat at the press table in the James S. Page Governmental Complex and watched my community plead with the Nassau County Board of County Commissioners.
The room was full. County staff opened an overflow room for the people who couldn’t fit. For more than three hours, residents spoke. Library supporters asked commissioners not to close the Bryceville branch or cut hours in Yulee and Fernandina Beach. After a break, neighbors came forward to oppose Wards Creek, a proposed development near their homes.
Commissioners adopted the county budget, library cuts included, 5-0. The Wards Creek decision is still ahead: commissioners delayed their vote until Oct. 26 to review stacks of documents residents brought that night. (Read our full coverage of the meeting.)
Neither issue was new. County Manager Taco Pope reminded the room that the budget process began in February and moved through months of public workshops, all recorded and posted on the county’s website. Wards Creek had been in the works for about a year.
Pope is right. The information was out there, posted online and recorded in hours of public meetings.
But information being available isn’t the same as information reaching people.
The library supporters knew the cuts were coming. The Friends of the Yulee Library had been talking with county decision-makers for months. They went to meetings, they spoke and they wrote letters. What they needed was a way to reach the wider community.
The Wards Creek neighbors did their homework, too. They gathered surveys and state records and assembled binders for every commissioner. But those binders arrived on the night of the vote. Commissioner Klynt Farmer asked who “dropped the ball.” Commissioner John Martin urged residents to bring their concerns to the community meeting next time, rather than “a book at the last minute.”
Both are right. And both point to the same problem.
Somewhere between “it’s posted” and “people know,” most of this county was left out.
That gap isn’t anyone’s single failure. Residents are busy raising families and running businesses, and few can sit through a six-hour workshop on a weekday afternoon.
Closing that gap is what a community newspaper is for.
Traditionally, newspapers cover the meeting. Reporters sit through the agenda, record the votes and quote the speakers. It’s a solid habit, and a necessary one. It just isn’t enough anymore in a county growing as fast as Nassau.
Nassau NewsLine was built to be a community newspaper in the fullest sense: not just a record of what happened, but a bridge between the people who know what’s coming and the people it will affect.
To build that bridge well, we need to hear from you. How do you find out what’s happening in Nassau County? Email, text, Facebook, Nextdoor, this newspaper, a neighbor? What decision do you wish you’d heard about sooner? Tell us at editor@nassaunewsline.net.
And if you see something moving through county government that your neighbors should know about, call us.
Here’s one to start with: The Wards Creek hearing resumes Oct. 26 at 5 p.m. in Yulee, and the developer has agreed to hold another community meeting before then. If it affects you, now is the time to be heard.
Monday night proved how much this community cares. Hundreds of people gave up an evening to be heard. They deserved to be heard sooner.
Tracy McCormick-Dishman is editor of Nassau NewsLine. Reach her at tdishman@nassaunewsline.net.
