Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Mosquito officials need a reality check

Can a [Mosquito Control District] administrator who gets the highest salary in Monroe County -- $186,400 -- relate to or understand what an average person who lives here in Monroe County earns or spends? With the salary this man makes, he can afford a millage increase of 33 percent and not feel the devastation, pain or havoc this proposed increase will have on the average person who works and lives here in the Florida Keys.

Does this administrator understand high unemployment rates? People are leaving Monroe County because of the costs. People are losing their homes. My investment in my home has been decreasing, I am on Social Security and did not receive a raise last year. I am grateful that I am getting what I do get.

Does this administrator understand some people are working two and three jobs just to put food on their tables? Does he understand that by increasing the taxes it will intensify these conditions?

Do the three elected commissioners also understand staff is grateful for just having jobs in this day and age; being able to pay their bills and put food on the table? Do you think it is the right time to be budgeting for a 5 percent raise and increasing the annual spending by nearly $2 million over last year? Did these three elected commissioners offer any cuts to the expensive budget on their own?

We did have two mosquito commissioners who did target over $2 million in cuts to the budget and voted against the increases -- but in vain. I do understand having a savings account is good business practice, but over $8 million in taxpayer money sitting in reserves, tied up doing nothing? Pull some of that money and use it so as to give some relief to the taxpayers living on the edge of economic misfortune.

What will it take to bring back reality to the administrator and three of the elected commissioners? Remember the "Gang of Three"? What happened to that group? Would that be a reality check for these three commissioners and their administrator?

Kay Thacker

Key Largo

Board member ignored a magnificent project

Debra Walker has been a member of the Monroe County School Board for 16 years. According to her July 14 letter to the editor, it took her until just recently, only after our children and taxpayers were gravely injured, to institute fiscal reforms that would protect our assets so that they might be spent educating students. Any duty-bound individual managing a $108 million school budget would never have waited 16 years to enact these safekeeping measures. Ms. Walker was seriously negligent in upholding her fiduciary responsibilities to the people of Monroe County. ...

In several e-mails exchanged with Ms. Walker, instructional strategies, along with a host of positive steps that would generate success for our kids in the classroom, were shared with her. At this time, an in-depth description of the benefits that Task Force Achievement would have upon our children appeared in the newspapers. The achievement gap between our students and their counterparts worldwide would finally be eradicated. ...

Ms. Walker replied: "I have no information about the so-called task force that recently appeared in the paper. No one has contacted me. Let me know if you hear anything further."

Ms. Walker is disingenuous when she cites in her letter that she never received a response from me concerning Task Force Achievement. ... Apparently, Ms. Walker's contempt of others doing what she has been unwilling or unable to accomplish blinded her to the magnificence of this project.

Ms. Walker simply did not want to involve herself with it, as she had once again aligned herself with the Tallahassee bureaucrats for another round of failure and nonperformance.

John Donnelly

Key Largo

Collusion with BP amounts to fascism

Collusion of government and big BP is what is called fascist, and you want us to call it democracy. What a joke on the American people.

Bouransing Persaud

Key West