Downtown "meet and greet"

I am the President of my Homeowner's Association. I went to an event for Homeowner's Associations this evening.

The event was a "meet and greet" and was designed to allow those involved with Homeowner's Associations to meet each other and several elected and appointed officials. Many other people in the community attended as well.

I spent some time talking to a number of people at the event.

I had a short conversation with City Councilman Smith. He assured Nelson Peters that there were enough votes on the City Council to "Either pass the Smoking Ban adopted by the County" or to "Adopt a stronger smoking ban." He said those were really the only two options that would pass.

I had a longer conversation with County Commissioner and Mayoral candidate Nelson Peters. We talked about how we both disliked negative campaigning and he assured me his campaign would be positive and focus on the issues. We talked about Eminent Domain and we agreed on that issue. We talked about the smoking ban and did not agree on that issue.

We also talked about Tim Zank!

Nelson Peters told me that "The County would be voting to change the date of adoption of the smoking ban to June 1st 2007 at their next meeting. This would result in the County implementing their smoking ban at the same time as the local hospitals." I think this is a good move. This will give local business owners some time to comply with the new ordinance.

I had a conversation with incoming County Commissioner Bill Brown. We talked about several items including Eminent Domain. We did not entirely agree on Eminent Domain; however, we came to some middle ground. Bill Brown is more in favor of Eminent Domain then I am. Bill Brown and I did agree on the Smoking ban and that it is a property rights issue...

Phil GiaQuinta and Matt Kelty were in attendance; however, I did not get a chance to talk to them.

This was a good event and I plan on attending more events like this in the future!

Mike Sylvester