Light-up McIntosh December 15
Light-up McIntosh will begin at the Civic Center at 6:30 p.m. The event will host Santa Clause and an area choir from six local churches will sing.
07.11.07 -- REPORT: Community meetings to discuss building a permanent school building
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
BY CHER PHILLIPS
Members of the McIntosh Area School Board and other school employees and volunteers will be hosting community meetings to discuss two options for building the town's elementary charter school a permanent building.
Linda McCollum said today that invitations would be sent to the town's registered voters inviting them to one of their neighbor's homes. McCollum said they used a mailing list of registered voters to send individual invitations, but that everyone is welcome to attend. Residents were divided into geographical areas and invited to the neighbor's home who was hosting a community meeting closest to them. (***Event organizers ultimately would like residents to attend the home they are invited to initially, when possible. While everyone is welcome to attend a session in town, the hosts in the individual homes are planning refreshments and to accommodate so many people.)
The neighborhood meeting schedule is as follows:
Sunday, July 15
2:30 p.m. Neil & Nancy Crenshaw’s Home, 6369 E. Place
4:00 p.m. Cary & Linda McCollum’s Home, 20900 9th Street
7:00 p.m. Randy & Celeste Brown’s Home, 20601 10th Street
Wednesday, July 18th
7:00 p.m. Sportsman’s Cove Screen Room, Hosted by Casey Girardin
7:00 p.m. Henry & Beth Nelson, 5758 Ave. F
McCollum said that the residents hosting the homes are either of volunteers or school board members. She said the meetings will be somewhat structured, but will include a question and answer time.
"At each home, there will be at least one board member," McCollum said. She said Jody Smith would be presenting at Sportsman's Cove.
There will also be a method for attendees to be able to fill out a form so the school's supporters ** (a better word here would have been event organizers, see clarification below) can give feedback to council members on how people in town feel about building a permanent school building.
The school board has narrowed down their options for a new school building to two for consideration. The first option involves the town retaining the property where the school is currently standing and taking on a loan to build a new school, which the charter school would pay back in a yearly lease. The other option could be for the town to sell the land to the school.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
*** CLARIFICATION made July 12: I spoke with Linda McCollum, the source for this story, this morning and she asked me to clarify a couple points. The first point surrounds the event locations, made above. The second was my use of the word "supporters" in terms of reporting the feedback. A better word here would have been "event organizers." McCollum's concern was that those who don't support the school might not attend these events or speak their minds. Though the organizers of these events do support the school, McCollum asked me to make it clear they want to hear feedback from both residents who do support and those who do not support building a permanent building for the charter school.
Labels: school
posted by Cher @ 3:02 PM,
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Editor
Editor and Publisher:
I'm Cher From McIntosh, FL I'm a graduate student at the University of Florida working on a master's degree in Mass Communication. While I was finishing my undergrad degree in journalism last year, I reported on McIntosh, Fla. for an in-depth reporting class. I figured that the reporting and the public record files should go somewhere people can access them. Reporters don't report to keep the information they find to themselves. Some of that reporting is included here in a forum that allows response. McIntosh suffers because with no news coverage, the local government and the rumor mill have too much potential to run rampant over residents. I moved to McIntosh in the fall of 1999. My profile
About This Blog
The primary purpose of this blog is to accurately reflect what happens in town public meetings and dispel rumors. I record the meetings and make them available for download. One of the goals of this blog is to offer residents a place to voice opinions. The comments, views and opinions expressed there are not necessarily those of the editor.
