If you haven’t been following along, you can get all of that here. I won’t bother rehashing all of the particulars as to why the proposed policy was asinine and how members of the community schooled the board as to the many holes in the pretzel logic commissioners employed in its defense. Nevertheless, it was another impressive showing from the engaged members of a community that has found itself relentlessly beaten and battered by a bought-and-paid-for county commission and the stooges and cronies it has installed in our local government while ridding it of its best and brightest personnel.

Most likely, that was owed to both the obvious futility of pleading with crooked politicians to exercise reason and the board issuing a notice Wednesday afternoon that the item would no longer be time certain. The crowd was not as large as when the item failed to get enough votes from the planning commission or when the county commission voted to transmit the proposal to the state, despite its advisory committee’s negative recommendation.

On Thursday, a sizable congregation of well-intentioned citizens assembled in the Manatee County Commission chambers to bear witness and enter testimony before their elected representatives went forward with a predetermined plan to gut our wetland protection policies, despite woeful water conditions and broad public disapproval.

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