Planning Commission Experience

“The Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission is an independent community action agency, led by appointed citizens, which serves all citizens of Hillsborough County by providing a vision for improving the quality of life.”

That’s what one of the big signs on the wall said.

I’ve never been to a planning commission meeting before, so this was a big learning experience. 

This meeting was very formal, very standard, and very intense.  Well, maybe not intense for what was going on, but the people on the planning commission’s board have a lot of homework. 

I had a very hard time figuring out what was going on when they were talking about the comprehensive plans for Plant City.  I was happy to see that they were working on “improving the quality of life” for Plant City, my hometown.  Well, my mom lives there, so Plant City has a bit of importance in my life.

During the public hearing, it seems like you have to have read the plans in detail before voting in favor or against it because I couldn’t have decided on that plan with the amount of time given to the board to vote.  They obviously did their homework and read the plans over and came to a decision. 

There were four comprehensive plans presented at the hearing and the only people to show up to this hearing were the people speaking about the plans.  No regular citizens showed up.

And this meeting is so structured.  The board had copies of their agenda for the public (so I grabbed one).  On the agenda, which they followed, they had a call to order, purpose and order of meeting and roll call.  I thought that was a bit silly but it’s just procedure.  They’re covering themselves.

They had at least four cameras along the top parts of the walls and a small camera on the podium.  There was a producer sitting in a small desk with a laptop switching camera views to the big screens for us to see who was talking.

The way the hearing went was the presenter would give a brief overview of what the plan was, and I still couldn’t quite understand the full impact of it because I didn’t read the whole plan like the board members did. 

After the presenter refreshes the board on what the plan will do, the presenter opens the floor to the board to ask the presenter any questions.  After the board asks questions they open up the floor to the public for questions.  Once they finish questions they vote on it. 

The board unanimously voted for each plan. 

I think for the next time, if I were ever to go to a planning commission meeting, I would do my homework.  The agendas are printed in advance to let the public know what the board will be voting on. 

To start, I would look up the comprehensive plan amendments.  The codes of the plan amendments are printed on the agenda so they are easier to find.  For example, the meeting I attended discussed four Plant City comprehensive plan amendments, two were map amendments and two were text amendments. 

One of the codes was displayed as:

PLANT CITY: COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AMENDMENT PC/CPA 10-01 – MAP AMENDMENT (ALABAMA AND HITCHCOCK STREETS)

So I would go to the planning commission’s website at theplanningcommission.org and look for PC/CPA 10-01 to read it.  And to make it easy for you, I found the page for it here.

 Overall, I learned a lot about board meetings.  I learned that hardly any citizens show up for them (it seems), the board makes frequent decisions on what to do with the millions of dollars in budget money, records it, actively asks the public (if they show up) what it thinks, and casts the vote. 

I also learned that I need to do my homework, as always.