Last Night's AFP Meeting Was Packed

W-O-W! Yea, that pretty much sums it up.

In the process of trying to help organize all that we had planned and manage my children, I neglected to bring my camera which I regret because we had such a great meeting and so many photo ops!

Joe Collins, kudos to you for your organizational efforts and laying out the details of this states political districts. You did a great job!

Also special thanks to Ed Nelson for all your organizational skills and voice of reason. Thank you for being our Treasurer and another collaborative mind.You did an awesome job getting together all the buses for 9-12 and beyond and I look forward to you replacing me as Joe's wife. lol

And congratulations to a great group of AFP'ers who have responded and stood up in this state and our district for lower taxes, smaller government, accountability and transparency. You folks have my gratitude and my respect for your dedication, knowledge on the issues, and your perseverance. It is from you that I get my energy to try to organize us together to work towards our common goals. Our success together makes us strong and gives us all a renewed spirit to fight against these things day after day, week after week, and month after month. I'm so very proud to be a part of those of you who have joined with us.

Tonight was particularly interesting as we had two elected officials who came out to speak with the group.

I should mention that I had invited the Wicomico County Council in it's entirety to address our group. I received three respondes that begged off due to prior engagements and I never even heard from the other four. I have to say that was extremely disappointing. Especially since I know the entire couuncil, as I have lobbied them to move their meetings to after work hours for 3 months, while I have known some members for decades. They are to vote on night meetings at their next meeting on Tuesday, October 6th at 10am, yet none of them even showed up to hear from their constituency.

That was not true of city council woman Debbie Campbell (D) or Paige Elmore(R) who both came out to our group to address up and take questions from the crowd of over 60members. As you might assume this is not a crowd that might throw out soft ball questions either. Debbie spoke of fiscal issues that were unhealthy to the city with a lack of accountability with various specifics and she was met with some tough questions from the interested crowd. She asked that city residences get involved in their meetings as many financial issues are on the table. We developed City Council and County Council Committees who pledged to attend the meetings and participate. Lastly, the issue of PAC 14 was discussed and we will as a group and on this blog, be discussing that subject in great detail in the coming months. *Note a tone of a coming surprise here*

Delegate Elmore shed much light on the state level and laid out much of what he felt was going on on a federal level as a result. He fielded some tough questions regarding the state budget, his voting record, and was really great about addressing the questions regarding the states' fiscal predicament.

Largely tonight, we focused on education about how folks can and should participate in their local and state politics in the ultimate effort to deal with big government, taxes, government budgets, and various intrusions into our lives.

We are looking forward to the future and hope to host other venues of local and state politicians and hopeful candidates, not as a platform but as a venue for citizens to examine canidates' voting records, as well as opportunity for the voters to be heard.

Who will be next up? Cain? Conway? Kratovil? Ireton? We welcome you all.

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