President Visit a Guarded Secret

Last updated on August 3, 2020

The post on Nextdoor.com Town Transparency. Dealt with why the President’s visit was a guarded secret. It was completely nonpartisan. Written solely to ask the town of Belleair. Why wouldn’t they alert Belleair alert residents about an upcoming visit of the President?

It appears the City of Largo was considerate and sensible enough to alert its residents to the visit and road closings as were other nearby towns.

Belleair sends breaking no news text alerts on the hottest topics. Including town closings, employees of the month, road closures, road projects, the LPGA tournament being held, and being canceled and other self-serving alerts. Yet an event as monumental as the President United States visiting Belleair was kept a guarded secret by Belleair?

An event I’m sure many residents would have appreciated knowing about, and some residents would love to have come out to see the Beast” and watch the President’s motorcade. While others who got stuck in traffic for hours, would have appreciated a heads up from their town? 

Like Belleair resident, Jim H. of Belleview Belleair, who, said, "I called the Belleair police department. They said it was a Pelican Club Event, and that is all they knew. The sheriff's department said to call back in two days, and they might have an answer. I had to go to the Pelican Club and ask a manager on the morning of the event, to find out what was going on. My street (Pinellas Rd) had no parking signs everywhere, but the town officials would not explain what was happening. I later found out they routed the traffic on Indian Rocks Road to our street, the narrowest street in Belleair. Amazing, no one got in a wreck."

Why would he be told something as unresponsive as this? Why wouldn’t Belleair want to help answer his questions?

Doesn’t Belleair’s ordinances mandate someone to get some permit or permission to hold an event of this caliber? Or does that only apply to us, serfs?

The President’s visit produced some interesting posts and a nice change from some of the monotonous posts. Haven’t seen this much activity on a Nextdoor.com topic since the great coyote contra-conflict?

I read quite a few comments from the sublime to the ridiculous. But the ridiculous thing I didn’t read was an alert from Belleair. Come on, sending residents an alert wouldn’t have bruised the budget that much?