Have you watched the latest Brooksville City Council meeting online? The most amazing and rare thing happened: an elected official gathered information and changed his mind after listening to the people of the community! It was so wonderful and refreshing to see City Council Member David Bailey explain how he filled out the annual review for City Manager Mark Kutney based on his personal experience, which had personally been good. However, after filing out the review, he talked to local businesses and residents around town and got a very different picture of how the City is being run. And he heard enough negatives all around that he went so far as to recommend termination of the City Manager’s contract during the meeting. Mr. Bailey is truly someone who understands what his role is as a city council member and takes it seriously. We find it quite refreshing to have a council member with a conscience and the willingness to back up his constituents.

Likewise, after seconding the motion to not renew the City Manager’s contract, Council Member Blake Bell talked about how many negative stories he heard regarding the management of the City, including from someone who wanted to open a business in Brooksville, but refused to open it within the City limits due to hearing how difficult the City is to work with. He also said he had spoken to people with businesses in multiple towns, and all expressed their frustration with Brooksville’s lack of support and help compared to other communities. As he talked, Council Member Bell demonstrated that he put the work into making his conclusions and not just went through the motions and made decisions from his own personal bubble. We definitely need more proactive council members in Brooksville, but it looks like we are on our way to a better future with Council Members Bailey and Bell. 

In a more perfect world, this would be a teaching moment for some of our other city council members who appeared to have made their decisions not based on community input, since they are so rarely seen at local events and meeting local business people, but on their own decades of serving on Council. (Yes, we have been recycling many of the same council members for decades, during a time Brooksville failed to thrive, so it’s no surprise that there are so few new ideas, nor even support for new ideas.) Council Member Battista went so far as to chastise Council Members Bailey and Bell as newbies who didn’t understand that there could, and have been, worse, and even corrupt, City Managers, which is apparently how he sets his standards for the job. And he claimed that the naysayers were just upset that they didn’t have “side door” access to the City Manager as they had in the past. Had he talked to local residents and business people, he might find that the actual complaint is that many don’t even have front door access, requiring multiple attempts to even get an appointment or phone call with the City Manager. Heck, even getting an acknowledgement response to an email is next to impossible from the City Manager for those who are not council members. And if they finally do get to speak to Mr. Kutney, they often leave feeling unheard and unsatisfied.

We urge the three other city council members to try to think back to when they were first elected and eager to support the community they live in. Get out, talk to residents and business owners and get an outside of City Hall perspective on how the City is responding to its citizen’s needs. Perhaps we are wrong and they will only hear happy stories of people content with the state of the community. Or perhaps they will hear the tales of frustration that both Council Members Bailey and Bell heard and remember to have an open mind about what is needed. Either way, they will have a better feel for the pulse of the city that they claim to care about. 

The Meeting can be seen at: Feb 01, 2021 City Council Regular Meeting – Brooksville, FL (swagit.com) and the discussion about renewing the City Manager’s contract starts around 3:17