To avert a conflict of interest, Lacoochee's committee organizer avoids scheduling a meeting on the day the Buccaneers season opens.
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published July 23, 2003
DADE CITY - Hoping for a big turnout at her next meeting on Lacoochee, community planner Isa Blanford plans to avoid a big competitor: Monday Night Football.
Blanford, who broke Monday night's crowd into three subcommittees for the next meeting, said Tuesday she will reschedule the Sept. 8 meeting.
She already was tossing around the idea of holding the next meeting on a Saturday morning to give participants a long time to talk.
But when told that Sept. 8 was the opening night of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' season - sure to draw away some of her committee members - Blanford made up her mind.
"Oh, yeah. I can't miss Monday nights," she said, a big Bucs fan herself. "I did not realize." Blanford said she usually holds barbecue parties during Bucs games, this one the season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles.
A new date has not been set. She hopes to talk first with some of the 78 members who attended the first of several community and economic planning meetings.
Blanford was pleased at the outcome Monday night. At the end, participants signed up to help on one of three subcommittees: one to focus on children; another on crime; a third on commerce.
Each committee has slightly more than a dozen people.
Though Blanford organized the group in the wake of the June 1 slaying of sheriff's Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison, she hopes members will look at ways to improve Lacoochee and not get mired in the past.
"We are in the moving forward process," she said. "The issues that happened in the past are not for this forum."
Some who attended said they were encouraged by the turnout.
Gilbertine Haley, a Lacoochee resident, said she thought it was a wonderful start. But she is taking a wait-and-see attitude about potential accomplishments until the politicians start "practicing what they preach."
Saundra Coward, pastor of New Life Family Church in Christ in Dade City, said she was confident results would flow from the meetings because the desire for change stems from inside Lacoochee.
"It's going to happen," she added, "because it's needed and wanted in this community."
