Beverly Hills Residents Contemplate Meeting to Determine How the Commission Defines Majorities

SOURCE: County does Cannonball in BH by Mike Wright, Just Wright Citrus; 5/19/22

To commissioners like Chairman Ron Kitchen Jr., lack of citizen interest suggests apathy, so why spend money on a community that doesn’t care?

Beverly Hills residents, dozens of whom have shown up within the last year to advocate for the county to revive their community pool are now faced with a narrative that they can't get anything done because the majority of the residents don't want it.

"I don't get it," one new Beverly Hills resident espoused. "When no build people or anti-library display people show up then their opinion is in the majority. But when we show up, then it is just a couple of rouge residents who are pushing for something nobody else wants. What exactly is a majority?"

Chairman Ron Kitchen, who is most commonly associated with equating public participation to the voice of the majority, won a Republican primary as a necessary condition of his last electoral win. He was elected with 8,591 votes, or roughly 6.1% of the county's overall 140,000 population at the time.

"The inconsistency is what seems to be the most troubling," the resident said. "It's almost like they're using the guise of majorities for a personal agenda to selective support or oppose what they want regardless of what people think. But they wouldn't do that, right?"