Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan, representative of the 16th district of Florida, will be holding a town hall meeting in Sarasota at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. The meeting will be held at 11 a.m. on March 18.

The meeting was originally scheduled to be held in the Sudakoff Center on the New College campus. However, according to Buchanan’s website, the location was changed in order to accommodate more people.

“We moved the event to a new location to accommodate a larger audience,” said Buchanan spokeswoman Gretchen Andersen in a statement on the website, “We want to make sure everybody gets a chance to attend and is not turned away for lack of seats.”

The Van Wezel holds around 1700 people, whereas Sudakoff holds 400.

The town meeting is designed for Sarasota locals to voice their concerns about the legislation regarding the American Health Care Act.

“With Congress moving quicker than expected on health care I wanted to make sure my constituents had a chance to be heard and voice their opinion,” Buchanan said on his website. “I’ve held 74 town halls over the years and look forward to hearing what people have to say.”

There have been a number of protests and pleas for Vern Buchanan to not only take a stand on issues like immigration, but also to simply hold a town meeting. Earlier this month, protesters stood in Buchanan’s Sarasota office to address his lack of a town meeting, which many felt was a tactic to avoid confronting the public, WWSB ABC 7 reports.

“Since I’ve been serving, I’ve probably done more town halls than any other member of Congress,” Buchanan said to AVC 7. “I was out of town otherwise I probably would have done a town hall by now. We’re going to have one in the near future. I know there’s a lot of passion, so people have the right to express themselves and I’m going to be there to listen.”

Information for this article was retrieved from www.buchanan.house.gov and www.mysuncoast.com