For those who haven’t seen a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting in person in a while and plan to do so, make sure you leave an essential item in your vehicle or at home. The MCBOS Chairman Clint Hickman has prohibited the public, his constituents, from bringing in plastic water bottles into the meeting. Why would he do that? One, it could be that he is afraid of someone risking assault charges and jail time by throwing the bottle at him or another county supervisor. In my opinion, if you were a good and fair politician, there would be no need to rule your meetings with the public like a dictator. Reason two, Chairman Hickman likes to feel the power he has over people and let us know that he is far better than all the rest of us. There could be other reasons as well. Whatever the reason, aren’t you tired of being a citizen of Maricopa County, who has a Republican majority board of supervisors and think you would be better treated by the county supervisors if you were living in a Democratic led county like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Cook (Chicago), Illinois?
Here is the only issue with Chairman Hickman’s ‘dictator’ style rule, he doesn’t enforce it. Even when the members of the public bring their water bottles into the meeting auditorium, he allows them to have them and drink from them. He doesn’t have the security personnel take the water bottle from them or have the person leave the room. When the security officers run the members of the public bags and other belongings through the x-ray machine, they can see the water bottles, but apparently don’t care and allow the person to bring them anyways. What is the point of having a law or rule if you can’t or won’t enforce it? It is like having a posted speed limit of 55 MPH posted but all the police officers watch people drag race down city roads at lunchtime and not do anything about it. Again, this is Chairman Hickman’s mind and power control games that he likes to play with his constituents, making us feel like he is king, and we are his peasants.
A couple more games that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors likes to play with their voters. They limit public comment to 2 minutes per person while other county BOS allow more time. Citizens must wait until the end of the meeting to speak directly and openly to the county supervisors, while other county BOS allows public comment at the beginning of the meetings. Trust me, when the county supervisors hear someone make a comment that they don’t like, they smile cheesy little smiles, roll their eyes like middle schoolers do, or they keep looking up at the clock timer counting down the time for a particular constituent time is up and sits down, much like a teenager does when they are getting a tongue lashing by a parent. The immaturity level is off the charts when it comes to our county supervisors when listening to their constituents, especially from Steve Gallardo (Dem, District 5) and Thomas Galvin (Rep, District 2, who also lobbied for the Saudi Arabia company to soak up and steal almost all of our water).
Those who don’t know, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors schedules 2 Wednesdays per month as their day to meet with the citizens of the county. Yet, you can almost guarantee that nearly every meeting will not end with all 5 BOS members sticking around to listen to the concerns of the (their) people. They all have more important things like meet with some big corporations, meet with a county department that they oversee, which means that the county departments are on the county supervisors time, not the other way around. Chairman Hickman usually starts the meetings by “we need to finish up by 12 o’clock or we will lose one or more of our supervisors” or something to that regard. Totally BS and one of the reasons that I am a candidate to replace the dictator leadership style of Clint Hickman. When I get elected by the people, and should I be voted as chairman of the MCBOS by my peers, the county meetings will last until 3pm, 6pm, 9pm if they must, to ensure that every last citizen’s concern has been addressed that comes to see us. As a Maricopa County supervisor, my staff member who sets my schedule WILL NOT schedule me for any other meetings on the Wednesday’s that I meet with the people who put me in office, unless it is an absolute last resort. To me, the most important thing to a politician are the people that they represent, and that is exactly how I will serve as a Maricopa County Supervisor.