Public Meeting #3

Imagine that your mother has just collapsed on to the floor and is non-responsive. Are you going to call several ambulance companies to determine what the best rate is to transport your mother to the hospital. You may consider it after recent government action. On Oct. 8, the Hillsborough County Public Transportation Committee heard arguments from local ambulance operators on keeping a $25 surcharge on transportation bills. The ambulance companies adopted the surcharge to offset the high price of gas in recent months. Commissioner Brian Blair called the surcharge excessive and questioned if it was the commission’s duty to step in and monitor the ambulance charges.

American Medical Response spokesperson Nancy Castellano came before the commission to discuss the adoption of the surcharge. Castellano explained that despite a $10 charge per mile of the transport that patients are not charged for services offered by the medical technicians that operate the ambulances. For example, if a stretcher or CPR is required, a patient is not charged for these instances. Furthermore, the vehicles are left running the entire time of the transport. If a patient needs medical attention on the scene and then needs to be loaded on a stretcher, the ambulance is left running outside the property to continue running medical equipment and the air conditioning. All of these incurrences are at the expense of the ambulance company and are not charged to the patient. Castellano believes that due to high gas prices in recent months that the $25 surcharge is acceptable to offset the prices of diesel fuel that the ambulances require.

Commissioner chairman Kevin White noted that the commission has oversaw the implementation of surcharges in both the taxi and tow truck service industries and that it should be their duty to oversee the ambulance division as well. The commission approved a $1 surcharge on taxi fare and a $10 surcharge on tows to offset gas prices. The charges were adopted in April when the average price of gas was $3.69 a gallon. Since the adoption, gas prices have seen a steady decline leaving Commissioner Blair to ask if the ambulance surcharges were justified or just plain greed. The commission was unable to come to a conclusion on the validity of the surcharge and decided to postpone a judgment and put it on the agenda for next month’s meeting. Since the next month’s meeting was cancelled due to commissioners having previous obligations, the ambulance surcharge will remain in effect for at least two more months. 

Tax Collector's Office

Unlike other agencies that we have visited, I feel that the Tax Collector's Office drove home the fact that their largest goal is to serve the public in a timely manner. Preston made a point to stress how hard they would work to meet a deadline. I believe that their resolution to return documents speedily made my burden seem a little bit lighter when it comes to investigative reporting.
In regards to their Powerpoint presentation, I believe that they did an excellent job on helping me to further understand the meaning of items on tax documents. Before listening to their lecture, I had researched tax records and had been bogged down by the legal jargon. Preston easily described what each item meant and what its value was in regards to a news story. In addition to addressing navigation of their website, I especially paid heed to Preston’s lecture on what items would be best to research when gathering together a news story. His list of public records used for creating a story got me to think about what documents I should request for my public figure biography. I was aware form previous lectures as to what documents were available to me, but was still confused as to how they were accessed and who could offer them to me.
My only concern with the lecture was that I became a bit lost in all the discussion of numbers including homestead exemptions and tax credits. I’m not completely sure how to integrate that into a story and was therefore thoroughly confused as to the mathematic equations. If it were possible, I believe that examples of why these exemptions would make a story newsworthy were offered that it would aid my understanding of the process. For example, if a discussion detailed how someone may have used the homestead exemption to benefit themselves when in fact they abused the system.

William March

Dedication and an inner drive seem to be the required traits to become an effective investigative reporter. The stories that Mr. March talked to us about seemed to require endless hours of research and fact-checking. The simple fact that he had to travel to Miami to research a person’s voting habits further exemplifies the hard work it takes to get a story. Mr. March not only gave us great websites and tools to use when unearthing a story, but he drove it home as to how to use the research tools in your writing through his past experience. For example, the Autotrack system is a tool that I would be able to use on countless stories. In fact, the system would be extremely beneficial to my public figure biography. Furthermore, I was completely blown away by the amazing intuition and enterprise put into creating the Future Tech story. Furthermore, the fact that a story such as the Future Tech story could bring about criminal charges furthers the idea that I have picked the right profession to help enact change in society.
The major difference that I saw in the presentation by Mr. March in comparison to other presenters or other classes that I have taken is the fact that he did an excellent job of tying together the research tools to practical use in a newsroom. In previous classes, I learned about many research engines online or public records requests, but reviewing my returned data seemed to wield nothing but figures and general information on the case. Mr. March gave me the insight to not only read the facts, but to read into the fats and question the data in front of me. In addition to reading into the facts, he proved that it was beneficial to crosscheck the facts with other data to see if anything was awry. Mr. March’s presentation was one of the most empowering lectures on being an enterprising journalist.

Public Meeting #2

Despite a complete budget cut for their group, the Commission on the Status of Women has soldiered on in raising awareness about women in Hillsborough County. During their recent Sept. 22 meeting, the group decided what the future would hold for their involvement in the county. “It’s going to be a struggle today to determine how to continue the group in a creative way financially,” said group secretary Felicia Crosby-Rucker. The end of the week would mark the end of the budget period at which point any funds left in their department would be absorbed into a pool by the county. The commission struggled on how to spend their remaining budget effectively by producing brochures and reports of recent research conducted on women in Hillsborough County.
Group member Susan Leisner urged members of the commission to create a work plan for the coming year. Leisner pointed out that the creation of a work planner would aid the commission in receiving money from the county’s biannual budget and keep the commission on task. Ideas for the upcoming year’s work planner included suggestions listed in their research documents on how to better the female population in Hillsborough County. “We have these suggestions from our research as to how to better the community, but what good are they if we don’t use them,” questioned group leader Cindy Kane. The commission delved into their research and decided to address the issues of women’s healthcare and children’s healthcare in the coming year.
For the first quarter of the calendar year, the commission hopes to address women’s healthcare issues by offering workshops that would highlight issues such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular care. Since the commission cannot give money directly to non-profit organizations, they aim to team up with existing organizations to offer services to the community through workshops. Commission members plan to teach workshops and offer guidance to local women in hopes of increasing preventative care of health-related issues. In the second quarter, the commission plans to address issues involving children’s healthcare. The commission hopes to highlight growing issues amongst children and families regarding immunizations. Growing fears over families deciding not to immunize their children due to side effects prompted the commission to believe that entire classrooms could become infected with contagious diseases. The commission hopes to intervene with preventative care measures that address the benefits of childhood immunizations through workshops.
The commission will hold their next meeting on Oct. 27. On the agenda is a presentation from the Housing Commission detailing incoming foreclosure funds.

Clerk of Courts

Astonishment was what I felt when reviewing the magnitude of services offered by the Clerk of Courts office. Having believed that the office merely contained court documents relating to civil and criminal cases, I was taken aback by the amount of public documents that they processed. Unbeknownst to myself was the fact that a door-to-door salesman needed a permit to operate his business which in turn was issued by the Clerk of Courts office. It has been a struggle for myself to determine what avenues to take in finding public documents when creating an article and the Clerk of Courts has offered me a plethora of documents. No longer do I believe that I need to go to the public library and labor over microfiche in order to garner public records documents. Instead I now understand that I can obtain marriage licenses, mortgages, judgments and court papers. Moreover, it seems in my best interest to request the documents in person for a quicker return and smaller charge.

In addition to my newfound knowledge of the services offered to the public, I was interested in the facts detailing marriage licenses. I really enjoyed the fact that the office offers a discount on marriage licenses to those who partake in a pre-marital class. It was astounding at how many marriage licenses that the office issued in a year and I believe that pre-marital counseling will help to keep those marriages intact and possibly decrease the office’s call center’s calls for annulment assistance. In fact, I was amazed at how many calls the switchboard receives in a day. Before taking this class, I was unaware of the services available to me. It was pleasing to read that many citizens use the services offered to them by the Clerk of Courts.

Orient Jail

The cold concrete and fluorescent lights of the Orient Road jail were a sharp contrast to the cheery disposition of its workers. I found myself often wondering how one could maintain a chipper disposition when dealing with such hardened individuals. I myself found it hard to even concentrate on our guide’s discussion when faced with a woman being led in handcuffed in a cocktail dress knowing full well that she wasn’t going out for a business lunch at 2 p.m.
Once I got past the fact that we were amongst criminals charged with a multitude of different crimes, I became amazed at the professionalism of the Orient Jail workers as well as the amazing detail they put into dealing with criminals. The process of booking a person into the jail was very simply put by our guide and shed light on a process that I was unfamiliar with. Not only did I learn how people were booked into the jail, but I learned that throughout the entire process their actions are documented. The documented actions would be a great supplement to a story about a recently arrested criminal. In addition to a police report obtained from the Sheriff’s office, I could also use a Criminal Incident Report from the jail to add to my story.
I’m still a bit unclear as to how much video is open to the public. As our guide told us, the video of the inmate being tossed from his wheelchair was all over the news, but would a video clip of a prisoner in lockdown be able to be released to the public. When we went into lockdown and witnessed the prisoner on suicide watch, I wondered if the video that was being filmed from the corner would be able to be shown in the nightly newscast if the prisoner was of prominence.

Hillsborough Sheriff's Office

My trip to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office was very informative in regards to where I could go to find public records related to criminal incidents. Before my visit to the office, I was under the impression that if an item was not available on the sheriff office’s Web Site that I could only obtain such information from the public library. My knowledge of where to obtain pubic records was very small before my participation in this class and the visit to the sheriff’s office was very beneficial.

Not only was I able to learn where I could obtain crime-related reports, but I learned about what types of information was available to me. I took great interest in the fact that search warrants are open to public inspection and include rather detailed information that could create a great lead-in for a developing news story. In addition to search warrants, I learned a great deal about incident reports. Before my visit, I surmised what had occurred from the brief information located on the arrest report online. The incident report would be a great research tool in regards to developing the events of the story. I especially enjoy the narrative style incident report written by the police officer on the final page of the report.

It probably wasn’t what Mr. Calloway intended, but his admission that it was possible for journalists to be on top of a story if not ahead of the police by listening to police scanners. Before thinking of a police scanner as a useful tool in learning where a good story might be, I associated scanners with nosy neighbors. Also, it was very good to know that videotape taken within the police station could be subject to public records. I am now debating the idea of requesting video of some friends’ arrests.