Osceola board must be accountable. Let citizens speak
We’ve all heard the phrase “Democracy dies in darkness,” often utilized to criticize the lack of public accountability protocols in our government, especially at the federal level. Yet, over the last few months under the chairmanship of Commissioner Brandon Arrington, Osceola residents have seen our Board of County Commissioners (BCC) try, time and time again, to kill our own local democratic process, leaving us to wander in darkness.
For instance, during the Oct. 11 BCC meeting, Chairman Arrington wrongly argued that “in the United States of America, the official language is English,” not allowing a local resident to address the Board in Spanish. Should we remind Arrington that, first, there’s no official language in the United States and that, second, over 55% of Osceola County residents identify as Hispanic, most of them coming from Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory? In fact, the 2020 U.S. census showed that, between 2010 and 2020, 74% of the county’s population growth came from the Hispanic community alone.
With that in mind, shouldn’t the Osceola BCC have translators available to allow Spanish-speaking residents to participate in our local democratic process? This is already done by other local governmental bodies across Central Florida, including the Orange County School Board.
By not allowing residents to provide public comments in Spanish at the BCC meetings, Arrington and the other commissioners, who sadly remained quiet throughout the awkward interaction, are simply denying the majority of our residents the ability to speak up and be heard by their local elected officials, continuing to marginalize our community. Perhaps, Arrington should instead learn how to speak Spanish.
During that same meeting, right after his tasteless and inaccurate comments against Spanish-speaking, Arrington not only threatened to use the police to throw out those providing public comments but actually had the police throw a local resident out of the meeting, arguing that the situation was “unbecoming” and that he was just trying to “conduct business.”
You know what’s unbecoming? Elected officials thinking that they are above the people, not wanting to hear those who oppose their proposals. To quote Arrington, “this is the United States of America!” Exactly! This isn’t Cuba or Venezuela, where government officials do as they please and people have no way of expressing their grievances.
Legally, here in Florida, conducting business means allowing the public to participate and provide their feedback on the problems we face. That’s clearly not what’s happening in Osceola County.
Unfortunately, this isn’t where it ends. During the last BCC meeting, our commissioners bypassed the Redistricting Advisory Committee (RAC) that they had appointed by unanimously voting to adopt a redistricting plan that had not been previously discussed in public.
Despite the fact that the RAC was appointed in September, the adopted new district map for the Osceola BCC and School Board was first introduced on Nov. 8, being posted online by County Manager Don Fischer following the recommendations made by the Commissioners during their
Nov. 6 meeting.
Even community organizations that had been engaged in the local redistricting process, including Alianza for Progress and For Our Future Florida, were not aware of these last-minute changes. The BCC effectively denied Osceola County residents a real opportunity to participate in the discussion over the new district map, even sidetracking the work done by the RAC over three months.
As a long-time Osceola County resident, I am appalled to see the tricks utilized by our Board of County Commissioners to leave the public out of the process. We can’t let our politicians kill our local democracy in darkness.