Members bothered by postponed meeting

Some members of the Suncoast Parkway Advisory Group are miffed that turnpike officials have twice moved to meeting scheduled for next week until the middle of January.

The 18-member advisory group has not met since early September. At that time, the next meeting was scheduled for Dec. 2.

Two weeks ago, citing a meeting conflict with Department of Transportation officials, the meeting was moved to the next day.

Then last week, parkway project manager Carl Gibilaro moved to the meeting to Jan. 20, saying several advisory group members had conflict with the Dec. 3 date.

Jan. 20 won't work either for some advisory group members from Sugarmill Woods, because that community's Civic Association has its annual meeting that night.

Paul "Skip" Christensen, who represents the civic association on the advisory group, sent an e-mail to Gibilaro that complained of the new date.

Gibilaro said Monday he spoke with Christensen and will work on an alternative. Christensen, president of the civic association, said Monday the two haven't spoke on the issue.

Christensen and some other advisory group members say that they aren't getting enough information from the Turnpike Enterprise about the proposed Suncoast 2 project in Citrus County.

Gibilaro said his team is still reviewing comments made during a Nov. 13 public workshop. He said, because of that, he doesn't have much to share with the group anyway.

Christensen said there remains plenty to discuss.

"In their minds , they don't have anything to talk about that in our minds they do", he said.

Parkway opponent Janet Masaoy said meetings have been postponed four time since the first began in February 2002. At that time, the group decided to generally meet every two months, though Gibilaro said meetings aren't scheduled if no reports are slated.

"They're not really interested in what we had to say," she said.

Citrus County Commissioner Roger bachelor, also a member of the advisory group, said he has no concerns.

"When they've had something to bring back to the group," he said, "they've had the meetings."