Today's Letters: Waterers, we're watching you

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published June 19, 2007

Back in January when I received my water bill, inside was the new schedule of watering restrictions. As I understand it, it is for all in Hernando County, due to the drought. The restriction specifies what days addresses ending in odd or even digits are allowed to water, and the designated times. It also states, no watering on Saturdays or Sundays, except for hand-watering plants and shrubs by a handheld hose. I'm not aware of these restrictions being lifted.

Where is Code Enforcement on the weekends, when watering with sprinklers is going on? I'm sure these same people received the same notices we all have, so why do they consider themselves exempt? You know who you are!

The little rain we have received has not eliminated the drought, and we are among the driest counties along the coast. I think more should be done to make these offenders aware they aren't going to be getting away with watering their lawns.

All of us would like to have a green lawn, but know how important it is to conserve and obey.

J. Cahill, Spring Hill

Treat city budgets like a business 

Skip the ranting and offer some good ideas June 10, column

Webb asked for specific solutions; here they are:

First, you take a look at the 2000-01 local budgets. What has gone up the most, you cut the most. You would cut salaries, pensions, benefits, etc. Manpower could stay the same with lower salaries.

Are you forgetting Florida is a low-wage state? You also can lower wages through attrition. As older, more expensive employees retire, new ones are hired at much lower salaries. Raises could be put on hold because the last few years they were so big. Private and public companies do this every day.

That wasn't so hard, was it? Someone has to make the difficult decisions.

John Jung, St. Petersburg

Trent, Bennett ought to see bars

It is obvious all is not well in the previously sleepy haven of Brooksville. Hot on the heels of the various personality conflicts flourishing inside City Hall, a former police chief from this side of the county line investigating one of yours, while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement sniffs around the trivial matter of critical evidence, such as guns and drugs, disappearing into thin air.

Now we have the disturbing account of the city Housing Authority executive whose sticky fingers wandered into the coffers of federal funds. Betty Trent, along with Joe Ann Bennett and her young nephew Devon Moore, apparently conspired to defraud the U.S. government of some $40, 650 imprints of Washington's likeness. Not an inconsequential supplementary income for just 18 months of criminal activity.

Unfortunately for these three miscreants, the payments made to Moore did not show up on the latter's tax return and this attracted the attention of the vultures in the IRS. Even Al Capone could not escape this ever-vigilant agency and consequently these shamateur fraudsters were doomed from day one.

While not to the extreme left of political thought, I would concede that the nation's minimal investment in "advocating and ensuring the provision of adequate affordable housing, particularly those with very low or moderate incomes" leaves no fat for these limited funds to be plundered by unscrupulous criminals.

There is something profoundly repugnant when public servants such as Trent, probably already earning a very decent salary plus benefits, steal from that very faction of society who are most in need of their help and support. For that reason alone we must hope that Trent and Bennett both get to spend a lengthy deterrent vacation in a place of penal confinement.

It's a fairly safe bet that Moore will escape the penitentiary in return for his role in assisting the prosecution of his co-conspirators. That's a business-as-usual decision in all such cases.

I did note that a certain Carl A. Pilcher, reappointed to the Housing Authority very recently, seems still to have an inexplicable regard for Trent when logic would suggest he would wish to distance himself from her by several light-years. This is the same Pilcher who favored appointing an existing insider to the vacant post of executive director when that same logic was visibly screaming for a new broom.

On June 8 the Times reported Pilcher as saying, " I don't picture Betty (Trent) wanting to come back." Kudos to Pilcher for the understatement of the year.

Chris Lloyd, Lecanto

[Last modified June 18, 2007, 21:21:15]