{"id":10221,"date":"2021-04-26T09:33:39","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T13:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=10221"},"modified":"2021-04-26T10:13:17","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T14:13:17","slug":"demand-evening-commission-meetings-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/04\/26\/demand-evening-commission-meetings-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Demand evening commission meetings now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR-1024x576.jpg?resize=351%2C197&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10222\" width=\"351\" height=\"197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR.jpg?resize=2048%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR.jpg?w=2220&amp;ssl=1 2220w\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Polk County has 17 cities that hold public Commission meetings. All of them hold evening meetings starting at 6 p.m. or later except Lakeland. Many cities across Florida and the nation, both large and small, hold evening meetings, which gives easier access for their citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Lakeland Commission briefly tried 3 p.m. meetings, but has now decided to go back to morning meetings at 9 a.m., without even giving evening meetings a try. Yet when evening meetings have occasionally been held, the room is always full of people. 3 p.m. is no better than 9 a.m. for providing access for the people to attend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We have pushed for evening meetings in the past, but our voices have always been ignored by our commissioners. Their message to us means, \u201cPublic Citizens Keep Out.\u201d This refusal to hold evening meetings is a form of restricting access to government and voter suppression. There is no debate, evening meetings give better access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We do not elect dictators, and we need to be involved in making the decisions that affect our tax dollars in Lakeland. Demand evening meetings now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Paul Cunningham, Lakeland<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polk County has 17 cities that hold public Commission meetings. All of them hold evening meetings starting at 6 p.m. or later except Lakeland. Many cities across Florida and the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}