Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Re: Hernando County tax deadbeats.
Editor: People in Hernando County are requesting many services that would improve the quality of life in our community: better traffic enforcement, better schools, better roads, clean and flourishing road medians, etc.
The tax delinquency rolls printed in the Times a week or so ago show the people who are thwarting our efforts to make Hernando County a safer and nicer place to live.
I was shocked when I got to the end of this voluminous section: 7,351 people owe taxes for last year, many from the previous year.
These deadbeats owe you and I $5,158,415.32 for last year and who knows how much from the previous year. This amounts to a little more than $700 per person.
Pay your fair share of our tax bill now and keep paying it in the years to come. Make Hernando County a nicer, prettier and safer place to live.
Re: School redistricting needs an organized effort from board, June 3 Times editorial.
Editor: Hernando County School Board member Jim Malcolm's impulsive and reckless declaration of an overcrowding "emergency" in our schools speaks volumes about his inability to exhaust conventional methods of resolving the current classroom space fiasco.
While I am sure the problems revolving around the classroom seating arrangements are not easy to solve, creating hysteria by veritably shouting "fire" in the movie house doesn't help things either.
I am very interested how Mr. Malcolm and/or other members of the School Board came to think that such a flippant use of the "emergency" term would create light at the end of the classroom conundrum tunnel. Mr. Malcolm has never been one to keep his opinions to himself regarding the quality of issues proposed by him and others during School Board meetings. However, we have suddenly been treated to a grand case of stoical arrogance when our county's families question the providence of busing our children miles and miles away from homes that have schools in nearby vicinities.
Did he/they think that declaring an emergency situation would resonate with the public in our post 9/11 society, to the extent that the board's inertia would be freed up to resolve our classroom issues? If he/they did, it backfired. Upon reflection it merely looks exploitative.
The analogy in the Times' editorial, of the School Board playing poker with this "emergency" hand, is bang on target. Mr. Malcolm's irreverent creation of this emergency and his subsequent lack of leadership to champion it have let slip his hand and revealed he is bluffing. His stumbling, bumbling, play-it-by-ear approach to these situations merely creates a vacuous atmosphere of distrust between the school system and parents.
The good work of some School Board members, the superintendent's office and our schools' faculties are reduced to the appearance of incompetence because people like Mr. Malcolm make their Faustian deals to resolve issues that require analysis and intellect as well as compassion and pragmatism.
While I am sure the board will dig itself out of this current hole, as it has barely done with budgetary and teacher salary issues in the past, it won't be because career board members like Mr. Malcolm piously assert their leadership skills with ill-thought solutions that only create chaos in our burgeoning community.
Re: Dirty moves, beach booze jeopardize idyllic park, June 2 commentary by staff writer Robert King.
Editor: Hernando County commissioners, beware!
As residents, I suspect we are being set up for a sting operation by the current owners of Weeki Wachee's Buccaneer Bay complex. How? This sudden burst of activity to bring in different attractions, sell alcoholic beverages, etc., is a ruse to get us to think attendance has improved markedly and the place is now a moneymaker.
Yet, as sure as I am sitting behind this keyboard, when the county buys it, we will be forced to pay for huge and outrageous capital and infrastructure improvements (none of which seem to be getting made), and liability dangers will rule out selling alcoholic beverages.
Expenditures? Up. Attendance? Down. Profits? In your dreams! Money pit? Absolutely!
And, of course, let's not forget all those annoying little money-draining details, such as the employees now becoming county employees instead of contract employees and all the baggage associated with government employment: higher wages, benefits, tenure, etc.
Don't fall for the ruse, commissioners. Let's not have a Cypress Gardens scenario thrust on our residents.
A headline on a letter to the editor published Friday did not accurately portray the writer's topic. It should have read Owners of vacant buildings should face hefty property taxes.