|
|
|
Radio schedule for this week: June 1st through June 5th
|
| | |
Monday, June 4th, 2009 at 12:30pm
|
Looks like I'll
only have two three episodes of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300
WMEL this week: tonight (Monday 6/1), and tomorrow night (Tuesday 6/2), and a shortened half-hour show
on Thursday night 6/3. On Wednesday and Friday nights WMEL will be covering high school sports, and on Thursday
night we'll be carrying Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the Orlando Magic and the LA Lakers.
But as always, I'll make the best of what I have. Remember, my show is your best chance to make your opinion heard on
the big news stories of the day, both local and national, so call in during the show at 321-631-1300 to get on the air!
And you can hear WMEL online from the website at
http://1300wmel.com.
Talk to you tonight at 8pm!
EDIT (6/4 at 6:15pm): I've been told that Thursday night's pre-game show before Game 1 won't start
until 8:35pm, which means I'll be able to squeeze in a half-hour version of The Vince Young Show on Thursday
night at 8:00pm as well. Hence, the edits above. Hey, I'll take it!
|
|
Crist sides with state workers over taxpayers: radio links from 5/27
|
| | |
Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 12:15pm
|
I swear, one of these days I'll be caught up enough to be able to update my website
with news links on the same day that I talk about them on the radio, but anyway... here's what I talked about on the
previous edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, last Wednesday night, 5/27.
Governor Charlie Crist signed the state's $66.5 billion budget last week and
only used his line-item veto to get rid of two
things. One of them was the planned pay cut for all state employees making over $45,000 a year, a pay cut that would
have saved the taxpayers $30 million. As State Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson put it, "It sends a message to all other
lawmakers that state workers are important." I guess it also sends a message that we the taxpayers are NOT important,
especially since he left in all of the increased fees for car registrations, licenses and other state services. He also
left in the cigarette tax increase that will somehow miraculously increase revenue and simultaneously get people to
quit smoking. Never mind that you can't have both... it's one or the other. If fewer people are smoking after the tax hike
that means fewer people are paying the tax... which means lower tax revenue. Just ask New York.
Remember, that pay cut proposal was the same one that prompted state employees in Tallahassee to
stage a massive protest back in April.
On a workday. In the middle of the day. To demonstrate how important they were, I guess. Meanwhile, with a large
percentage of the state's employees skipping out on their jobs that day, the entire state of Florida somehow managed to
survive the entire day without them and miraculously avoided descending into chaos and anarchy, thereby showing that we
don't need most of those workers to begin with. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: government is not a jobs
program. Government employees have no right to demand that we the taxpayers continue to pay them to perform unneeded tasks.
And I refuse to be called "greedy" for wanting to cut them off. They are the greedy ones for forcing me to pay
them to do things that don't need to be done!
Brevard School Superintendent Richard DiPatri's
proposal for a school-funding property tax
hike was approved 5-0 by the School Board.
Okay, it will only add $8.40 a year to the average tax bill in Brevard, and if I'm going to have to pay an extra $8.40 in
taxes anyway, it might as well go to the schools. But the School Board isn't the only branch of government that wants a
second chance at reaching into my wallet. City, county, state, federal... all levels of government are hurting for cash
right now, and since cutting spending is hard and raising taxes is easy, they're all looking for ways to raise taxes. If
all of them take an extra $8.40 each out of my wallet, that's gonna start adding up. Credit to Dr. DiPatri for also
cutting some fat out of the school budget along with this tax hike. But I still don't like that he framed this with the
usual false choice of either we raise taxes or we'll have to lay-off teachers, as if he had already found and trimmed
every last ounce of fat from the school budget. There's plenty more we can still cut before we have to lay-off teachers...
how about eliminating those redundant middle-management "area superintendents" from the payroll, for starters?
Something every government official should keep in mind before they reflexively try to raise taxes to balance
their budgets... the state of Maryland last year tried to solve their budget deficit by creating a new, extra-high state
income tax bracket for millionaires. But instead of paying the extra tax,
one-third of Maryland's millionaires simply moved out of
state, taking themselves off of the state income tax rolls and leaving an even bigger $100 million gap in the state's
budget. Oops. When will government learn that the only viable option to get rid of budget deficits is to cut wasteful
spending?!? Raising taxes does not always lead to higher tax revenues, something that anyone with a basic grasp of
economic theory already knows. Why doesn't government know this already?
And finally, here's the old story I mentioned from Europe about
parked cars getting ticketed for speeding by automated speed
cameras. But yeah, nothing can ever go wrong with speed cameras or red-light cameras. They all work perfectly, with
zero errors. Nothing to worry about here.
|
|
Red light cameras come to Cocoa Beach: radio links from 5/25
|
| | |
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 10:00am
|
Here's what I talked about on Monday night on The Vince Young
Show on AM-1300 WMEL:
Cocoa Beach City Commission approves red
light cameras
Still no story on this from Florida Today, but you can see
video of the debate here: just pull up the video
for the May 21st meeting and then skip ahead to the 36:45 mark. The vote was 4-1, with Vice-Mayor Kevin Pruett once again
giving the only NO vote, so it's a done deal now. Red-light traffic cameras will be coming to Cocoa Beach. At least it's a
video-based system instead of a photo-based system, but the videos will still be reviewed by a private company, which
means anyone who drives through Cocoa Beach will potentially be vulnerable to
abuses
just like this, or like this.
Of course, the City Commissioners who voted YES all said this was about traffic safety, not revenue. But if it was
really about traffic safety, they would've taken the action that would've reduced red-light running and red-light crashes
by 80% and has proven to be far more effective than red-light cameras:
making yellow lights last a second longer.
Norcross, GA,
Denver, CO,
and several other
cities in Georgia can all tell you: making the yellow light a second longer does far more good than putting up red
light cameras. But you can't make any extra money from adding a second to the yellow light, so no surprise which option
Cocoa Beach picked.
Oh, and five City Commission members, and not a single one of them did any research to find these stories? Not even
the sole NO-voter, Kevin Pruett? Shame on all of you. When you're not even willing to spend a few minutes on Google to
research something before you vote on it, you're failing your citizens badly.
Other stories:
It looks like the long fight between Courtney Roberts and Brevard County may be over
soon, and this is not a happy ending. Remember, a county employee carried out an illegal personal vendetta against
Roberts that halted the construction of his new house for almost two years and directly caused immense to that house and to
his financial stability -- all facts that nobody disputes, by the way, not even the County. Despite all this,
state law apparently caps his damages at
$200,000, which doesn't come anywhere close to reimbursing Courtney Roberts for what he's been through. The only way
around it at this point is either a court appeal or getting Tallahassee to approve a one-time exception to that cap, both
long-shots. It just goes to show how throughly screwed you can get due to just one government worker with a grudge. And
some of you out there want that same government employee to be in charge of your health care? Yikes.
President Obama says, "We are out of money now." Tell us
something we don't know, Mr. President!
North Korea joins the nuclear club.
Oh, goodie. What's the over-under on how long before they start selling nuclear warheads to radical Islamic terrorists?
Oh, and of course, I'll be back live on the air tonight, Wednesday, May 27th at 8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL for another
episode of The Vince Young Show. Talk to you then, and be sure to call in at 321-631-1300.
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links from 5/18, 5/19 and 5/21
|
| | |
Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 11:30am
|
First of
all, Happy Memorial Day! For most people, today will be a fun day of rest or recreation, and there's nothing wrong with
that. But at some point, please take some time to remember the true purpose of this holiday: to honor the memory of all
the soldiers who have fallen in battle to defend freedom, to defend this nation, and to defend innocent people around the
world.
The Vince Young Show will be live tonight at 8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL, so don't worry; no pre-taped
holiday show here! Tune in tonight... my brother Andy is in town, and I'm trying to convince him to do the show together
with me, and trust me, you won't want to miss that. You can also call in, of course, at 321-631-1300.
Speaking of the radio show, wow, I was a bad webmaster last week, but better late than never! Here's what I
talked about last week on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL:
Richard DiPatri wants to raise your taxes!
Tomorrow night, Tuesday May 26th at 5:30pm, the Brevard County School Board will have their next regular meeting. You
will want to be there, because on the agenda is a proposal for a property tax increase for school funding. Florida Today
ran several stories on this last week (here,
here and
here),
but I found it interesting that Superintendent Richard DiPatri is resorting to the ol' political blackmail trick:
"Let us raise your taxes, or we'll have to lay-off teachers!" How 'bout trimming more fat from the school budget instead?
Dr. DiPatri's budget proposal does actually include some worthwhile spending cuts that will make Brevard's schools run
more efficiently, but DiPatri needed to go further along those same lines in order to close the funding gap. Instead, he
decided to stop short, because it's always easier to ask us to pay more taxes than it is to make the hard decisions to cut
spending. We're taxed enough already. Head to Viera on Tuesday night and make sure the School Board knows it!
Other stories:
For the first time ever, Gallup's poll on abortion opinions showed that
a majority of Americans now call themselves "pro-life." Interesting
news, coming on the heels of President Obama's speech at
Notre Dame, but as always, the devil is in the details.
Note to the Palm Bay Police: I know you're upset about the unpaid days off that Palm Bay is forcing on detectives
and support-staffers to easy the city's budget crunch, but is
filing a lawsuit really the answer? You're
just going to cost the city more money in legal fees and make it even harder for the city to meet its budget! How
about just trying to get new people elected to the City Council instead?
Attorney General Bill McCollum announced
he's running for governor in 2010. I do not understand why so many people are declaring their candidacy for statewide
elections that are 18 months away!
President Obama calls our current budget deficits
"unsustainable." NOW he tells us!
President Obama still wants to close Gitmo
by the end of the year, but not even the Democrats in
Congress like his plan. Is a 90-6 Senate vote veto-proof? I think so...
The office of Brevard County Sheriff Jack Parker
forgot to tell the State Attorney to extradite a
violent sex offender back to Brevard from Oregon. Oops! He got released instead, and it's the second time this has
happened this year. Get your office straightened out, Sheriff!
Talk to you tonight on AM-1300 WMEL!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links from 5/13
|
| | |
Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 12:30pm
|
Here's the belated links to the news stories I talked about on last Wednesday
night's edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL:
I'm sorry, but I still think people are getting too worked up over the
swine flu. Last week's
one-day closure of Golfview Elementary in
Rockledge was strictly precautionary, nothing more. The only student at that school with a confirmed case of swine flu
had already recovered from it by the time the test results came back. In fact, so many people with simple colds, regular
flus and seasonal allergies are running to the doctor declaring "I have swine flu!" and demanding to be tested for swine
flu that the state health department last week had to
suspend all swine flu testing except in
extreme cases. Swine flu has the potential to be serious and possibly even fatal even for healthy adults, but let's face
it: for the vast majority of adults who get swine flu, the symptoms will be the same as the regular flu, the treatment will
be the same as for the regular flu, and the outcome will be the same as for the regular flu. Do not panic!
Very glad to see last week's Palm Bay Works vote resulted in
a resounding "NO." We didn't need to go into
debt for 30 years to pay for road improvements that would only last 20 years, and other aspects of the bond issue were
just way too vague. Some advice to Palm Bay City Councilman Milo Zonka... want this thing to pass? Make the bonds shorter,
make the bonds smaller, and break this up into three seperate votes for road repaving, flood-control improvements,
and "economic development" (whatever that meant). The first two will probably pass. You simply tried to bite off
more than you could chew this time. Palm Bay has survived with crappy roads for the past 20 years, and there was no need
to go massively into debt just to rush all these repaving plans into completion within the next 3 to 5.
In light of the news that
Massachusetts is
buying cars for welfare recipients who get jobs, I've got to say this. Just because an act is good doesn't mean
government has to be the one to commit that act. For one thing, if the government doesn't have the money to pay for it,
that should end the debate right there. (Not that either party in Congress gives a damn about that...) And even if that
government has the money, often times there are private organizations and charities who can do the same good act far more
efficiently. A government that just willy-nilly buys cars for people is just ripe for leeches to abuse the system.
Government is a blunt instrument, a large and powerful tool that can accomplish big changes on a grand scale but is lousy
for getting things right on an individual, person-by-person, case-by-case basis. If you had to go in for open heart surgery,
would you rather the surgeon use a scalpel or a chainsaw?
State CFO Alex Sink is running for governor
in 2010 as a Democrat. Watch out, Republicans... she's smart, she's crafty, and she's going to give you one hell of a
fight.
Since when is it government's job to protect a business from having to compete for market share? Kudos to the
Melbourne City Council for getting this one right.
|
|
On the air tonight, 5/13; plus WMEL is now streaming online!
|
| | |
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 5:45pm
|
First, a
reminder that The Vince Young Show will be on the air tonight, Wednesday, May 13th at 8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL
for another hour of live-and-local talk. Call in at 321-631-1300 if you want to talk to me on the radio!
But even better... AM-1300 WMEL has a new website up at http://1300wmel.com, and the
station is now streaming online!
I won't have a show Thursday night or Friday night due to WMEL's coverage of Orlando Magic basketball and high school
baseball, so make sure you catch tonight's show. After tonight, I won't be on their again until next week, probably next
Monday or Tuesday night.
Talk to you tonight at 8pm!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links from 5/11
|
| | |
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 5:00pm
|
Here's the links to the news stories I talked about on Monday night's
edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL:
First of all, at their meeting last Thursday
night, the Cocoa Beach City Commission voted 4-0 to postpone the final vote on bringing red-light traffic cameras to
Cocoa Beach due to an absent City Commission member. The final vote will take place at their next meeting, next Thursday
night, May 21st at 7:00pm right there at the Cocoa Beach City Hall. Update your plans! If the Orlando Magic playoff
schedule allows, I'll see if I can be at that meeting to let them know what a bad idea this is.
If you truly care about traffic safety and not just extra ticket revenue, forget cameras. Instead,
make your yellow lights last one second longer. Just
ask the city of Norcross, Georgia.
I've been pretty hard on the Brevard County School Board and on Florida Today for the confusion surrounding the possible
pay rate for the new Superintendent of Schools. But now, we finally have an answer in the form of a specific contract
offer to the new incoming super, Brian Binggeli: a
base salary $202,000 per year, not counting retirement benefits. In contrast, Dr. Richard DiPatri's current base salary
as super is $217,000 per year, so Binggeli will make less money. Good. Also, Binggeli will NOT be eligible for performance
bonuses, and he'll only get a raise if Brevard's teachers also get the same raise themselves. Also good. The School Board
will vote on this contract at their meeting on Wednesday night, and I hope it passes, because I like what I'm seeing.
Rockledge has been on edge this week after a small handful of confirmed and suspected cases of swine flu
popped up at two nearby schools, leading
to one school being shut down for cleaning on Monday but re-opening on Tuesday. One thing I noticed in the story is that by
the time the confirmed results came back from the two students who turned out to have swine flu, they'd both already
recovered. The CDC is just that far behind on testing for suspected swine flu cases right now, because too many people with
a runny nose from their usual annual allergy fight are running to their doctor and saying "I've got swine flu!" Swine flu
is more serious than the regular flu, the symptoms are pretty much the same: fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat. And
the treatments are also the same. I just don't get the panic over this... if you do actually get the swine flu, odds are
you're going to ride it out just fine unless you also have something else medically wrong with you already. Don't freak out.
Go see your doctor, of course, but otherwise just get plenty of rest and drink lots of fluids, and don't rely on
hyperventilating TV news reports for health advice. (Come to think of it, don't rely on me either... but that's why I said
to go see your doctor.)
Looks like Governor Charlie Crist is running
for the US Senate in 2010. Oh, goodie. Since he's running for Senate, that means he won't be running for a second term
as governor. Who will run to replace him? Hopefully not
Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp, who apparently is
too stupid to be careful about personal travel when he's already under investigation for
using state-owned airplanes for personal
trips.
When you click the link for this story, you'll need to scroll down, but it looks like a judge has ordered Property
Appraiser Jim Ford to pay for the legal
fees of former Deputy Appraiser Lance Larsen, who was indicted on corruption charges last year during an investigation
into Ford's office. The evidence against Larsen was ruled inadmissable in court which led to the charges being dropped, and
state law required Ford's office to cover Larsen's legal fees as a result. Ford tried not to... no huge surprise, given his
record of shady dealings as our Property Appraiser. Remember, the evidence didn't meet the judge's admissability rules for
the narrow confines of that criminal case, but that evidence still painted a pretty damning picture of Jim Ford and his
office, and has yet to be refuted as false by anyone. Always remember that.
And finally, I briefly mentioned this story on Monday night's show about an argument in one Cape Canaveral
neighborhood over feral peacocks. Hey, I love
those birds, but I understand the problems they create and the property damage they cause, and stopping that has to trump
the pleasure of having pretty birds walking around. If the other residents want peacocks so badly in their neighborhood,
they can build pens for them in their backyard and keep them out of their neighbors' yards. Sounds reasonable to me.
Otherwise, get those birds out of there and into a more suitable habitat.
|
|
On the air tonight, 5/11!
|
| | |
Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 1:00pm
|
Just a brief reminder that I will be on the air tonight, Monday, May 11th at 8:00pm
for another live-and-local edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL! I'll be bringing you an update on
the plans to bring red light cameras to Cocoa Beach and letting you know what happened at last week's Cocoa Beach City
Commission meeting. I'll also take a look at the Palm Bay Works referendum. And I'll ask this question: if a government can
spend money to accomplish something good, does that mean they should spend that money? Or should they get out of the
way and let the private sector do it instead? That's all coming up tonight on The Vince Young Show.
Call in at 321-631-1300!
|
|
Vote "No" on Palm Bay Works
|
| | |
Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 12:45pm
|
Tomorrow,
the residents of my home town of Palm Bay will vote on a special election for the Palm Bay Works bond referendum. The
city wants to take out a $75,000,000 30-year bond to pay for a raft of road projects, infrastructure improvements, and
economic development projects. I'm voting "No," and I encourage all Palm Bay residents to reject this massive spending
plan.
I'm not even going to get into whether or not these proposed projects are worthwhile. On the surface, spending money to
pave roads, build sidewalks, and attract more businesses to Palm Bay all seem like good things to spend tax money on,
though as always the devil is always in the details when government is involved. But for the sake of argument, let's just
assume that there aren't any hidden turkeys in this plan, and that all of these projects are good ones.
No matter how good these plans are, they are not worth going into $75,000,000 worth of debt for. Close to $5,000,000 of
that money will be spent just on paying the interest on that debt over that 30-year period. Over 6% of that bond money,
poof. Gone. Spent on interest payments while doing absolutely no good whatsoever to the citizens of Palm Bay.
Consider, too, that this bond will last 30 years. We will be paying for the next 30 years for a road resurfacing that
will likely last only 10 years, maybe 20. If you were to buy a car with the intent of keeping it for 5 years, would you
agree to a car loan that would have you making payments for the next 15 years? I didn't think so. And whatever businesses
get attracted to Palm Bay from the economic development spending, there is absolutely no guarantee that any of those
businesses will still be around in 30 years.
And of course, how will this bond be paid off? Increased property taxes.
According to Florida Today, a homeowner with
a $130,000 home and a $50,000 homestead exemption would see their property taxes go up by $80 a year in Palm Bay if this
bond passes. Eighty bucks is no small amount in this economy, especially for someone already struggling to keep their
mortgage paid up.
I also don't understand the hurry here. Palm Bay City Councilman Milo Zonka, a staunch supporter of the bond, says this
bond is the only way to get such a large chunk of Palm Bay's roads repaved in the next three years. Who says it all has to
be finished in the next three years? Large swaths of Palm Bay have been dealing with potholes and dirt roads for over two
decades now, and while it's annoying, people have found ways to deal with it. The city of Palm Bay has done just fine with
a slow-but-steady repaving plan that has methodically gotten more and more of Palm Bay's roads up to par, and there is no
pressing need to speed up that process right now. If you're going to go this far into debt as a city, it should be for
something the city needs and cannot wait to finance through traditional means. Those conditions simply don't
exist right now.
I'm particularly disappointed to see Milo Zonka pushing this plan so hard. He wasn't my first choice in the last
election, but he didn't seem like a bad candidate to me, and I looked forward to seeing how he would do on the City Council.
But if this is his legacy -- a 30-year $75,000,000 debt for projects that can absolutely be done later without going into
debt -- then I can't see supporting him for re-election, or supporting him for any other public office for that matter. A
recession is not the time to plunge a city into massive debt.
If these projects are worth doing, then they're worth doing the right
way: slowly, carefully and responsibly over time, not in a pell-mell rush that needlessly ups the price-tag with a
debt-repayment plan that outlasts the improvements themselves. Vote "No" on Palm Bay Works on Tuesday, May 12th.
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links from 5/7
|
| | |
Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 12:15pm
|
Here's what I talked about last Thursday night, May 7th, on The Vince Young
Show on AM-1300 WMEL:
Forum shows ASR plan is all wet
My goodness, last week's public forum on
Rockledge's Aquifer Storage and Recovery was an
embarrassment to the city of Rockledge. The city's panel of experts, particularly James McLellan from the engineering
firm that designed the ASR project, really didn't seem all that interested in convincing people that ASR was safe,
preferring instead to rely on a dismissive attitude towards all those who oppose ASR. I single out James McLellan because
I caught him openly sneering at skeptical Rockledge residents on several occasions, and he showed a troubling over-reliance
on computer models and scientific theories to explain how things should be, rather than evidence or data to show
how things actually are. And even as Jim Egan from Save Our Aquifer rattled off example after example from other
parts of the state where models and theories failed to accurately predict how water would flow underground in other
situations, McLellan continued to insist that Egan was misguided and that the city's engineers had a nearly perfect grasp
of how the treated sewage water will behave once it's pumped underground.
Particularly laughable was McLellan's assertion that the treated sewage water is actually safer to drink than
the aquifer water currently drawn from private wells in Rockledge. According to McLellan's computer models and theories,
the aquifer water in Rockledge should be too salty to drink or to use for irrigation, and using it anyway should have dire
consequences. Never mind the multiple private-well owners in Rockledge who have used their private wells for drinking and
irrigation for quite some time with no ill-effects. If the computers say it, it must be true! There's no need for
pesky reality in this discussion!
But try this on for size... did you know that Cocoa has already tried an ASR well as an experiment? At a site a mere
two miles away from Rockledge's ASR site? And that it failed miserably? And that Rockledge's panel of experts were totally
unaware of Cocoa's ASR attempt until Jim Egan brought it up at the forum? You'd think that when attempting a potentially
risky and expensive water conservation experiment, a city's engineers would make a few phone calls to neighboring cities
to find out if anyone else has tried it before. But Rockledge didn't think of taking that simple step. If they had, they'd
be aware that Cocoa tested their ASR well with several million gallons of drinkable-quality water to be on the safe side,
and was only able to pump 25% of that water back out of the soil. The remaining 75% remains underground, untouchable and
unrecoverable. Imagine if Cocoa had done that test with treated sewage water instead of drinkable water.
Now consider that Rockledge's first ASR test will be with treated sewage water, because testing with drinkable water
would be "too expensive." Never mind that Cocoa figured out a way to do it anyway.
Pumping treated sewage water directly into the soil underground is simply too risky to the aquifer and local water
supplies. And considering that the only benefit is that it will now be a little easier to water some lawns during the dry
season, taking such a huge risk for such a minor benefit is the very definition of insanity. And yet the city of Rockledge
still seems to be charging onward, full speed ahead. That's why I'm staying on this case, hoping against hope that we can
get the Rockledge City Council to finally come to their senses and pull the plug on this plan.
Scott Ellis gets it: we have to spend less money!
Clerk of Court Scott Ellis has always been one of Brevard County's most reliable voices against wasteful government
spending, and two recent stories confirmed that once again. Ellis announced that due to budget cuts, he will
lay off 50 court staffers and close two Clerk of
Court branch offices. It's never fun to see people lose their jobs, but government is not a jobs program, so running
a more efficient government has to take priority over ensuring paychecks for unneeded government workers at the expense of
the taxpayers. And while closing those two branch offices will undoubtedly inconvenience some people in our long and
narrow county, keeping extra offices open is a luxury that is simply not needed in tight financial times. Having extra
branch offices is a good thing, but it's not a necessary thing, and necessary has to trump good when tax revenues are
shrinking.
That brings us to the second story: Ellis's proposal to
cut back on the county's funding of redevelopment
districts in Brevard. Hey, I'm fully aware of how beneficial redevelopment districts can be: see downtown Melbourne or
Cocoa Village. But as beneficial as those programs are, there are more important things to spend money on: fire services,
the Sheriff's office, road maintenance, stormwater projects, schools, the basic services that protect our rights to life,
liberty and property. Once you've funded all of those necessities and have some money left over, a redevelopment district
can be a valid use of that money if it will benefit the public good and provide a good return on the investment down the
road. But redevelopment districts are niceties, not necessities. Government spending should be prioritized, and right now
these redevelopment districts should be lower on the funding list until the national economy and property values start to
rebound, which in turn will increase the county's property tax revenues. If you don't have the money, you don't have the
money.
Which reminds me... the city of Palm Bay is getting ready to go $75,000,000 into debt to pay for projects that could do
some good, but which don't need to be done right now. But I'll talk about that tonight on WMEL.
|
| | |
Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 10:30am
|
With the Orlando Magic playing Game 1 against the Boston Celtics in the NBA
Playoffs tonight, The Vince Young Show will be pre-empted tonight on AM-1300 WMEL. That means I'll be free
to attend the public forum in Viera tonight to
discuss Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR), Rockledge's insane plan to take partially-treated sewage water and pump it
directly into the soil underground next to our drinking-water aquifer, storing it there for lawn irrigation during the dry
season. The forum will be held at the county's Government Center in Viera, 2725 Judge Fran Jamison Way, Building C, right
there in the County Commission's Meeting Room, from 6pm to 9pm tonight, Monday, May 4th.
I've talked about this
before on this website and on my radio show, and I remain convinced that when government engineers insist that nothing
could possibly go wrong, it's time to run hard and fast in the opposite direction. The city's engineers are relying on the
very same soil and rock that allowed rainwater to seep through them to form the aquifer in the first place to now suddenly
become waterproof to prevent this partially-treated sewage water from seeping into the aquifer and polluting a major source
of drinking water for the county. And despite telling us nothing will go wrong, the city has banned the use of private
wells for a mile around the ASR site, which tells me they're worried about the wells getting polluted. City representatives
have also declined to appear on my show on WMEL, citing lawsuit concerns, but the only way they could ever face a lawsuit
is if the ASR site polluted the aquifer and began harming people, the very scenario they insist won't happen. When you tell
me nothing could possibly go wrong but then take multiple precautions against things going wrong, that means you're lying
to me and that you do actually believe something could go wrong after all.
So, why is the city of Rockledge lying to me, and to you? I'll try to find out tonight. Hope to see you at the forum!
...
Also, it occurs to me I never did post any of the links to the news stories I talked about on my last radio show. Due to
WMEL's sports programming, I only made it on the air once last week, last Monday night. And speaking of, I'll only be on
the air once this week as well: Thursday night, May 7th at 8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL. Man, I can't wait for the sports
schedule to calm down again, because I'm getting antsy from not being able to talk to all of you, but I shall persevere.
Anyway, this Thursday night, May 7th at 7:00pm, the Cocoa Beach City Commission will hold their final vote on installing
red-light traffic cameras in the city. (Read up on the plan here.) Since I'll have a radio show
that night, I won't be able to attend, but I'll see about e-mailing the City Commission members a copy of the study by the
Texas Transportation Institute in 2005 showing that the single most-effective way to reduce red-light crashes is to
make yellow lights last an extra second longer, far more
effective than red-light cameras, hands-down. But of course you can't make any money from making yellow lights last longer.
So that's why cities go with red-light cameras instead, allowing some red-light crashes to continue to happen anyway
that could've been prevented by going with the solution that actually works better over the solution that makes money...
blood money, quite literally.
It also opens up law-abiding drivers to inexecusable abuses at the hands of the private companies that monitor these
red-light cameras and mail out the citations. Check out this story from Canada, where police at the scene of an accident
at a major intersection started directing motorists by hand through the intersection against the traffic light. You guessed
it... 17
drivers ended up getting red-light camera tickets in the mail despite the fact that a police officer had waved them
through the red light to keep traffic flowing. The monitoring company broke its own rules and sent the tickets out anyway,
hoping to still get their cut of the revenue from each ticket. And the police and the courts refused to intervene until
local media blew the story wide open and shamed the police into voiding all of the tickets.
And we want to voluntarily open ourselves up to this sort of madness here in Cocoa Beach now? Unreal.
For last week's arrogance-in-government award, check out Cocoa City Councilman Clarence Whipple, who last summer
sicced city Code Enforcement officers on an out-of-towner visiting a friend in Cocoa whose parked pickup truck partially
blocked a sidewalk. I guess just politely asking him to re-park his truck was just too arduous for the esteemed Councilman.
Oh, and when the truck's owner called Whipple out for his arrogance, Whipple ginned up a bogus assault charge against the
truck owner. Fortunately, a jury of his peers only
needed half-an-hour of deliberations to see this case for what it really was, acquitting the truck owner of all charges.
And that's just part of the story -- I didn't even mention the part where the Councilman got the City of Cocoa to spend
taxpayer money to buy him security cameras and fight a restraining order against him in court. Somebody needs to take
Clarence Whipple down -- politically, I mean, in the next election. Gotta be careful... don't want the Councilman charging
me with assault now, do I?
I also told you about a local church that rents space in a public school auditorium every Sunday for their services, and
the pastor's three-week sermon series about how married Christian couples can spice up their sex lives and strengthen
their marriages. Brevard County Schools responded by threatening
to kick the church out! Apparently, they have no problem with bringing experts onto the school grounds to talk to
unmarried underage teens about having sex with each other (also known as sex-ed classes), but they draw the line at a
preacher talking to adult Christian husbands and wives about having sex with each other. The situation was still unresolved
when I talked about it last week, but now Brevard
County Schools appears to be backing down, and they won't kick the church out after all. Glad to see common sense won
out in the end.
And finally, it sure was funny to see state government employees
protesting proposed cuts to their salaries
as if they're somehow entitled to our money, even in a down economy. As I've said before, government is not a jobs program.
If you are a government employee and your job is not vital to protecting the citizens' rights to life, liberty and property,
you have no right to demand to remain on the payroll to continue draining money from the pockets of the taxpayers of the
state of Florida. Notice how all of these protesting employees skipped a day of work to attend this protest, and yet
somehow the state of Florida didn't come crashing to a halt? That tells me every single one of those protesters is
completely and totally unneeded and serves no vital role for the citizens of Florida whatsoever. Fire them all, and see
how much money that frees up against the state's budget shortfall.
See you at the ASR forum tonight in Viera, and talk to you on the radio on Thursday night!
|
| | |
Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 8:00am
|
Due to a plethora of sports programming this week on AM-1300 WMEL, there will only
be one episode of The Vince Young Show this week: tonight, Monday night, April 27th at 8:00pm. Tuesday night
will be Game 5 of the Magic-Sixers NBA Playoffs series, Wednesday night will be a double-header of high school baseball
from the Friday Night Locker Room, Thursday night will be Game 6 of the Magic-Sixers series,
and Friday night will be high school softball coverage from the Friday Night Locker Room.
No idea on next week's schedule yet. Depending on whether or not the Magic can finally put the Sixers away (how the
hell did Orlando lose Game 1 and Game 3?), they might have a game on Monday May 4th or Tuesday May 5th, which would
pre-empt my show, and the Friday Night Locker Room may still have some baseball games to cover as well. Watch this space
for updates.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by WMEL's booth at the Melbourne Art Festival this weekend! It's always nice to meet
WMEL's listeners face-to-face, and a big hello to anyone who tunes in to my show for the first time tonight after meeting
me on Saturday or Sunday.
Talk to you tonight at 8pm. Call in at 631-1300!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links from 4/21
|
| | |
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 5:15pm
|
(EDIT at 8:20pm... the high school softball game is running later than
I expected tonight, so I'm still not on the air. If the game ends before 9:00pm, I'll try to sneak in a few minutes on the
air tonight, but it's not looking good. Stay tuned...)
I know, I know... I'm prepping for tonight's episode of The Vince Young
Show (8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL!), and I still haven't posted the links to the news stories I discussed on the
last show two nights ago! My apologies, but it's been a crazy week. Not much commentary with these links, just
the links themselves so you can make sure I'm not feeding you a total line.
Red light cameras may be coming to Cocoa
Beach! The Cocoa Beach City Commission voted 4-1 on the proposal last week, and now it just needs to pass a second
vote at the Commission meeting on Thursday, May 7th. Only Vice Mayor Kevin Pruett seems hesitant at all, while everyone
else seems to be claiming in public that this is about traffic safety, while believing privately that these cameras will
be a great source of revenue. I guess they haven't heard that the runaway number one way to drastically reduce red-light
running and the resulting crashes is to make yellow lights last
one second longer according to a 2005 traffic study by the Texas Transportation institute. I talked about this on my
show back on March 14th. The city of Norcross in Georgia started
losing money on their red light cameras this year when a new
state law forced the city to make their yellow lights a second longer, reducing red-light violations by 80% from last year,
which in turn cut the number of tickets, which in turn cut the ticket revenue.
Other cities in
Georgia have been running into the
same situation as Norcross, as has Denver, Colorado. Making
yellow lights one second longer will do far more to prevent red-light violations and crashes than those cameras ever will.
But of course, there's no way to make money off of making yellow lights a second longer, is there? So given the choice
between saving more lives and making more money, guess which one cities like Cocoa Beach are choosing?
Brian Binggeli will be Brevard's new
Superintendent of Schools, replacing Dr. Richard DiPatri when he retires this summer. Binggeli was the outside choice
between the two finalists, and I'm looking forward to seeng how he does. Hopefully he remembers that he works for the
School Board, unlike Dr. DiPatri who often seemed to think the School Board worked for him.
After this Sunday's Brevard Tea Party
capped off a week of similar rallies in Brevard and across the nation, it looks like President Obama is quietly responding
to the pressure to cut spending. Of course, he's responding by
making a nearly meaningless gesture
meant simply to fool people into thinking he's doing something to cut spending, but still, it shows that the White House
has finally realized that we "teabaggers" aren't going away. This is just the beginning.
Okay, so that's everything I talked about Tuesday night. So, what will I be talking about tonight? You'll just
have to tune in to The Vince Young Show tonight at 8pm on AM-1300 WMEL to find out! Oh, and of course, call
in at 321-631-1300. Talk to you tonight!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links from 4/16
|
| | |
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 10:00am
|
Whoops! While I was preparing for tonight's edition of The Vince Young Show
on AM-1300 WMEL, it occurred to me that I never updated this website from the previous episode! Time to remedy that
right now. Here's the stories I talked about last Thursday night on the radio:
Program schedule
I got pre-empted last Friday night and Monday night for high school baseball. I'm back on the air tonight, Tuesday
night, April 21st at 8pm on AM-1300 WMEL. Wednesday night, April 22nd, I'll be off again to make way for Orlando Magic
basketball, but then I'll return for another show on Thursday night, April 23rd.
Tea parties!
Did you go to a tea party here in Brevard? I sure hope so! I was at two of
them, the one in Cocoa last Wednesday evening that
drew a couple hundred people, and the Brevard Tea
Party at the Wickham Park Event Pavilion on Sunday afternoon that pulled in 2,000 protestors! I had a blast at both
events, especially getting the chance to meet some of my listeners and readers face-to-face and uniting with like-minded
people. Thanks to everyone who came out!
The White House tried to ignore us, then tried to label us as
extremists and potential
terrorists while MSNBC and CNN tried to nickname us with
a
crude and sophomoric sexual pun. But in the end, we were heard loud and clear. Thinking of a billion dollars as a lot
of money is quickly becoming a quaint notion thanks to President Obama's runaway spending in the trillions. And we thought
George W. Bush was bad on spending! And make no mistake, Dubya was awful on spending. But Obama is worse.
Now there are signs that President Obama has finally realized we won't be ignored and we won't go away quietly. But
we'll talk about that more on the radio on Tuesday night's show.
Who needs government? These people didn't...
So you think you just can't get along without government being there to take care of you, huh? Well, when a flash
flood washed out a state road in Hawaii, the state government dragged their feet on rebuilding the road, even as the
tourism businesses that depended on that road began to wither and die. But rather than waiting for a government bailout,
the nearby residents and business owners all banded together
and rebuilt the road themselves --
without a single penny or an ounce of help from the state government!
Following up on Courtney Roberts
Last week's public hearing between Courtney
Roberts and the County Commission was a disappointment to be sure, on multiple levels. And after the muddled
presentation from Roberts' attorney, lots of people suddenly have the misconception that Courtney Roberts is trying to rip
off the taxpayers of Brevard County. They're missing the point. The only reason Brevard County and Courtney Roberts are
even having this debate at all is because back in 2002, a handful of miscreants working on the staff of Brevard County's
government acted on personal vendettas and intentionally fouled up the construction of Roberts' retirement dream home,
breaking the law and causing incredible damage to the home. That's a fact. The County continues to admit this and confirms
it to be true to this day, seven years later, and they've already agreed to make Courtney Roberts whole. But they still
have yet to fulfill that promise. And I will continue to stand up for Courtney Roberts on this issue, no matter what a
bunch of nattering nabobs with only half the story want to say about it online.
That doesn't mean I don't have some questions and some doubts, and I'm starting to understand more why the County
Commission didn't open up their checkbook last week. But this story isn't over. Hopefully I can work out my schedule with
Courtney Roberts to bring him into the studio here at WMEL so he can address your concerns and answer my questions.
Courtney Roberts is the victim in this, and people need to keep that in mind.
...
Talk to you tonight at 8pm on AM-1300 WMEL radio!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links for 4/14
|
| | |
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 2:15am
|
Aw crud, is it April 15th already? Guess I gotta go do my taxes. But first, here's
what I talked about earlier tonight on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL!
Tea Party!
A variety of "Tea Party" tax protests will
take place in the next few days. I'm planning to be at the Cocoa event on Wednesday, April 15th from 5pm to 6pm at
the Ramada Inn on 900 Friday Road in Cocoa, near
the intersection of I-95 and State Road 524. And time-permitting, I'll try to make it to the main event as well on
Sunday, April 19th at the Wickham Park Event Pavilion on Wickham Road near BCC in Melbourne from 1pm to 4pm as well. To
find other events near you, check out the Brevard Tea Party website.
No show on Wednesday night
With the Orlando Magic playing their final regular season game, The Vince Young Show will be pre-empted on Wednesday
night. I'll return to the microphone on Thursday night at 8pm for another hour of live, local talk. Talk to you then!
Courtney Roberts: still buried in red tape
If you haven't heard anything about Courtney Roberts and his battle with the Brevard County government, do yourself
a favor and go read up on it. That site will give you all the details, but here's
the basics of this fight.
In 2002, Courtney Roberts began construction on his oceanfront retirement dream home just south of Cocoa Beach, but a
small group of county employees with a personal grudge against Roberts started pulling out every bureaucratic trick in the
book to slow down construction of the home. They "lost" permits and paperwork, altered documentation, "misinterpreted" some
laws and outright broke other laws, with everything eventually culminating in an improper Stop Work Order against
construction of the home before it could be completed. The home stood incomplete and unfinished for close to two years and
was still exposed to the elements when Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne rolled through Brevard, severely damaging
the vulnerable home.
During this fight, Roberts filed a lawsuit against the County, and late in 2004, Roberts was finally able to get a
hearing with the County Commissioners. The Commissioners were apalled at the behavior of the county employees who had
intentionally worked to thwart Roberts at every turn, and they voted 5-0 that the county needed to pay money to Courtney
Roberts to make him whole. Roberts and his attorney sat down with County Attorney Scott Knox and hammered out an agreement:
Roberts would put his lawsuit on hold, and the county would reimburse Roberts for all of the additional expenses he'd
incurred thanks to the gross misbehavior of the county's employees.
The County paid Roberts a little over $300,000 -- and then stopped. Roberts insisted he was owed far more, but the same
county government that had so egregiously mistreated him in the first place now tried to ignore him, hoping he'd go away.
But Roberts didn't go away. He went back to court, and ever since 2004, Roberts and Knox have been battling each other in
the courts over whether or not the county still owes Roberts any money. And in the meantime, Roberts' expenses have
continued to balloon higher, most recently reaching a total of $4.9 million, significantly more than what the county would've
had to pay Roberts if they'd simply lived up to their agreement in 2004.
On Tuesday morning, Courtney Roberts was back in front of the County Commission, imploring them during a 3-hour hearing
to honor their agreement from 2004 to make him whole. Instead, the Commission sorely disappointed me,
offering
Roberts a mere $100,000 and telling him to take it or leave it. Commissioner Robin Fisher even had the temerity to tell
Roberts, "I think we already overpaid you." The county government tore Courtney Roberts' life apart, and now the county is
acting like Courtney Roberts is the one who is being unreasonable for asking to be reimbursed. They should be on their
hands and knees and thanking him for not asking for punitive damages as well!
Of course, some argue that Courtney Roberts is inflating his figures, and Matt Reed has had two recent articles in
Florida Today that explored that angle
of this issue. So I don't know if
Courtney Roberts deserves the full $4.9 million he's asking for. But I'm pretty sure he deserves more than the $437,000
the county thinks he should get: $337,000 they already paid him plus the $100,000 more they're offering now. And bear in
mind, none of this would even be an issue if it weren't for the grossly illegal misbehavior of a handful of county
employees with personal grudges in 2002. The County started this, and Courtney Roberts is the victim here. Don't lose
sight of those facts.
Courtney Roberts did nothing wrong in 2002. He didn't deserve anything that happened to him, and there is simply no
excuse for making him wait seven years for a resolution to this miscarriage of justice. And now it's all but a certainty
that Courtney Roberts will turn down the $100,000 offer and will continue to fight this in court, and in the meantime that
figure of $4.9 million will continue to grow. In the end, he will almost certainly win, and the county will end up paying
Roberts even more money. And where does the county get its money? From all of us who pay taxes in this county. The
arrogance of this county government is going to cost all of us in the end.
President Obama: credit where credit is due
I'm sure you're already aware of the successful resolution to the
Somali pirate drama over the weekend. The American merchant ship captain was rescued unharmed after one pirate
surrendered and US Navy snipers simultaneously shot and killed the three remaining pirates. President Obama gave the Navy
clearance to proceed as they saw fit late last week, and reiterated that permission later. He could've easily gotten in
the way and tried to micro-manage things as other presidents have done in the past with the military, or he could've gotten
all weak-kneed and tried to avoid a violent outcome at all costs. Instead, he showed the world some spine and let the
military do their job, and they did a great job.
Now, I'm not saying that Obama is the second coming of Winston Churchill, nor am I suddenly going to vote for him in
2012. But geez, would it kill all the conservative pundits and talk-show hosts to give the guy a little credit for getting
this one right? The only one I've heard give Obama any credit is Neal Boortz, and he's a
Libertarian like me, not a Republican. Almost everyone else out there is bending over backwards to explain away Obama's
role and to find things to criticize him for anyway.
Seems to me Obama got this exactly right. He empowered the Navy to do their job, and in the meantime while the Navy
patiently waited to seize the perfect opportunity to act on, negotiations for a peaceful resolution were attempted. Yeah,
it was starting to feel like this drama was taking too long, but now we know why: the Navy was waiting for just the right
moment to take out the pirates. That moment came on Sunday, and it was well worth waiting for.
My side sounds like a bunch of putzes right now. Obama made the right call, and we're still looking for ways to criticize
him. That's a mistake. All this will do is undermine our credibility so that later, when we need to criticize Obama for
making obscene grabs for more government power and spending us all into the poorhouse, people will write us all off as a
bunch of naysayers who do nothing but complain.
Even a liberal can get things right now and then. Nothing wrong with admitting it, people. The truth doesn't have a
partisan label.
|
|
The Vince Young Show: news links for 4/9
|
| | |
Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 6:30pm
|
Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young
Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!
Jim Ford in the news. Again.
Looks like our ol' buddy Property Appraiser Jim Ford
is in trouble again. Ford's former right-hand
man Lance Larsen is suing the Property Appraiser's office to be reimbursed for the legal fees stemming from his corruption
trial last year, the one where the judge ruled on a technicality and said the jury couldn't look at much of the
prosecution's computer evidence. The charges against Larsen ended up being dismissed, and not long after that the state
had to drop their corruption investigation against Jim Ford. Since Larsen was never found guilty, he's now saying that
Florida state law entitles him to be reimbursed by the Property Appraiser's office.
Combine this with the fishy property tax breaks he's given to politically-connected people, plus all the other legal
expenses he's racked up that you and I will have to pay for, plus the way he took advantage of the state's retirement plan
and its "double-dip" loophole back in December... this man has cost Brevard County a ridiculous amount of money. And we're
stuck with him for the next four years. Great.
(Want to know more about Jim Ford's legal messes from last year?
Here ya go.)
Speaking of "double-dipping"...
The state legislature is finally working
on ending this ridiculous practice. Good. It makes no financial sense whatsoever to allow an incumbent like Jim Ford
to run for re-election, win, "retire" from his post a week later to start collecting retirement benefits, and then take
the exact same job back again a month later when his new term of office begins while allowing him to keep collecting his
retirement benefits and his paycheck for holding office. That's not retirement. And we shouldn't have to pay for
this nonsense. Kudos to the state legislature for finally trying to put a stop to this.
Other stories:
Yet another story from Florida Today that says
the new
Superintendent of Schools will make a yearly salary of $240,000 including benefits. Florida Today is starting to
show some consistency now on reporting this story, so it's starting to look like School Board member Barbara Murray was the
one who had it wrong when she chided Florida Today on-the-record and insisted the yearly salary would be $240,000 plus
benefits. I'm still going to watch this story though... but if Barbara Murray didn't understand what she was voting on
back in February, she doesn't belong on the School Board. Period.
Have you heard the hissing over President Barack Obama bowing to a member of the Saudi royal family at the G-20
economic summit? The White House insists it wasn't actually a bow, but Politico.com
has the video. Take a look.
The White House claims Obama was significantly taller than King Abdullah and was simply bending over to clasp the king's
outstretched hand with both of his hands. But the video doesn't support that. Start watching about 50 seconds into the
video. Obama walks up to the king, only reaches out with his right hand to shake the king's hand while his left hand
remains at his side. And that's when Obama bows. American presidents should not bow to royalty. Period. And I'm
disturbed that the White House is trying to deny what happened, rather than coming clean and admitting they made an
understandable mistake in erring on the side of politeness. And it's all one more sign of what an amateur Obama is at
foreign affairs.
Now that Lt. Governer Jeff Kottkamp has been
caught using state airplanes for personal
trips, it looks like he's decided to lawyer
up. This should be fun.
US News says housing in Cocoa is affordable.
I wonder if the fact that nobody wants to live in Cocoa has anything to do with the housing being so cheap there.
Woman calls 911 because her take-out
meal didn't have enough shrimp in it. People who make these frivolous 911 calls need to be arrested and taught a
lesson.
A Port St. Lucie man went running down the street naked
so that he would be deported back to
Mexico. Well, if you insist...
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes for 4/6
|
| | |
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 2:15am
|
Tonight marked the debut of the weekday night edition of The Vince Young
Show on AM-1300 WMEL. I was on from 8pm to 9pm and enjoyed the chance to talk to you... but I'd prefer the chance
to talk with you as well! I'll be pre-empted on Tuesday night 4/7 and Wednesday night 4/8 for Orlando Magic basketball,
but I'll return on Thursday night 4/9 at 8pm for another edition of the show. Call in at (321)631-1300, and I'll give you
the chance to make your voice heard on the air!
Here's what I talked about earlier tonight:
Rockledge will FINALLY allow public debate on ASR
I've talked before about the insane plan from the city of Rockledge to
pump undrinkable wastewater directly underground
into the soil -- not in a storage tank, but directly into the soil itself -- and store it there for future use for lawn
irrigation. It's called Aquifer Storage and Recovery, ASR for short. The idea is to save drinking water during dry spells,
but they may end up polluting our drinking water in the process, since this undrinkable sewage water will be stored
underground right next to the aquifer. That's the same aquifer many residents and cities get their drinking water from!
City engineers claim that the bedrock and clay down underground will keep this wastewater from seeping into the aquifer,
but clay is not even close to waterproof, and much of the bedrock here in Florida is limestone -- which actually dissolves
in water! The idea that this wastewater can't possibly end up seeping into the aquifer is pure foolishness.
Rockledge's city attorney has been telling the city council
not to discuss this plan in public for fear
that public comments could hurt the city if they get sued. But the only way the city could get sued is if this undrinkable
wastewater ends up seeping into the aquifer and polluting drinking water, which of course the city engineers are saying
can't possibly happen. And if it can't happen, then that means the city has nothing to fear from a lawsuit and shouldn't
have any problem discussing this. And yet they didn't want to discuss it. Hmm.
Fortunately, sanity may be about to prevail. The Rockledge City Council has now agreed to
hold a public forum about ASR on May 6th.
(Details coming soon.) This will be everyone's chance to show the Rockledge City Council that the opposition to ASR isn't
coming from a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing hippie environmentalist wackos, but rather from concerned citizens who
understand full-well that limestone and clay are not waterproof, no matter how much the city's engineers claim otherwise.
Pumping undrinkable wastewater directly into the soil and right next to the aquifer is a bad idea. Period. Hopefully we
can get Rockledge to back away from this now.
Florida Today flip-flops on the new superintendent's pay -- again!
This is another story that I've talked about before, both on-the-air and on this website.
Brevard County School Superintendent Richard DiPatri will be retiring later this year, so the School Board has begun the
search for a new superintendent. But there's been some confusion over how much the new superintendent will get paid. It
gets a little involved, so I'll break it down for you as a timeline.
February 8th - Florida Today reported that the new superintendent will receive a yearly salary of $240,000
including benefits, compared to Dr. DiPatri currently making $277,000 including benefits.
February 10th - At a regular meeting of the School Board, School Board member Dr. Barbara Murray criticized
Florida Today for getting the facts wrong in their February 8th article. Murray stated for the record that the new
superintendent would get a yearly salary of $240,000 PLUS benefits, not $240,000 including benefits as
Florida Today had reported. Click here for the
minutes
of that meeting and scroll down to section G to read Dr. Murray's comments. You'll also see that the School Board voted
5-0 to set the superintendent's pay at "$240,000 plus benefits." (Emphasis mine.)
February 12th - Florida Today reported,
"This past Tuesday, the school board voted for the new superintendent's salary to be advertised in the range of $240,000,
which does not include benefits and retirement." This contradicted their original story from February 8th, but put them in
agreement with Barbara Murray's explanation and with the meeting minutes from the School Board. In another story the same
day, Florida Today reported, "DiPatri's base
salary is $217,941." This would mean that the new superintendent would get a base salary $22,000 higher than DiPatri's
current base salary!
February 24th - School Board member Amy Kneessy responded to an e-mail from me asking for clarification on the
new superintendent's pay, telling me that the new superintendent will make $240,000 including benefits. I e-mailed
her back to point out that Florida Today and Barbara Murray were both saying the new superintendent's pay would be
$240,000 plus benefits. Kneessy responded the same day and said that she disagreed with Barbara Murray.
April 5th - Florida Today reported,
"The new leader could be offered as much as $240,000 in salary and retirement benefits." So now they're back to saying that
the $240,000 figure includes benefits. That's what Florida Today originally reported on February 8th, but
contradicts their follow-up report on February 12th and contradicts Barbara Murray and the School Board meeting minutes.
In summary: Barbara Murray, the School Board meeting minutes from 2/10, and Florida Today from 2/12 all say that the
new superintendent will be paid $240,000 plus benefits. But Amy Kneessy, Florida Today from 2/8, and Florida Today
from 4/5 all disagree and say that the new superintendent will be paid $240,000 including benefits. Since Dr.
DiPatri's current benefits and bonuses add up to $60,000 a year right now, there's a big difference between "plus benefits"
and "including benefits." And yet two School Board members who both voted "Yes" on the new superintendent's pay can't agree
on what it is they voted "Yes" for, and Florida Today has now flip-flopped twice on what the new superintendent will
get paid.
This shouldn't be difficult. Why can't anyone at the School Board or at Florida Today figure this out?
Other stories:
Tolls have increased by 25 cents at most
expressway toll booths in the Orlando area. The reason: fewer people are driving the toll roads, and revenue has been
dropping. But increasing the tolls is just going to push toll revenues even lower because now even fewer people are
going to drive the expressways in Orlando because they don't want to pay the higher tolls! Just watch: a year from now,
they'll be asking for another toll increase because revenue has dropped even more. People are suggesting all sorts of ways
to protest the toll hike, but my favorite is to pay all of the tolls with nothing but nickels. It's perfectly legal, it's
easier for you to handle than paying in all pennies, but it will still be a pain for the Expressway Authority since they'll
still have a lot of extra coins to handle.
Federal cigarette taxes are also about to
increase, and the state of Florida is considering their own tobacco tax hike as well as a way to increase revenue. (New
York City and New York state have also tried this in the past few years.) But in response, smokers nationwide are making
plans to cut back on smoking or quit outright since they won't be able to afford the new tax. And instead of being happy
that fewer people are smoking, the government will be unhappy because this will lead to lower tax revenues. Remember, they
raised the tax in order to increase revenue, not to make people quit smoking. Only government can find a reason to complain
about people quitting smoking!
I
sincerely hope this was an April Fools' Day joke. If this woman is really this stupid, she has problems.
|
|
I'm moving to weeknights on WMEL!
|
| | |
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 9:15pm
|
The Vince Young Show is moving to
weeknights, 8pm to 9pm on AM-1300 WMEL! I'm thrilled to be moving to a nightly timeslot where I can stay on top of the
news on a daily basis, and I'm looking forward to the chance to talk to all of you every night.
Just like on Saturday nights, I'll keep taking your calls live on-the-air as well, so you can have the chance to make
your voice heard on the news and events that affect your life in Central Brevard. The phone number is (321)631-1300.
As part of this move, I'm going to discontinue the Saturday night version of the program. WMEL is also going to
continue carrying Orlando Magic basketball, so if the Magic are playing, that means I won't be on the air that night. But
overall, it's a better timeslot, and I'm excited about this move.
Talk to you on Monday night at 8pm!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes from 3/28
|
| | |
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 8:00pm
|
Okay, I've put together the links for the news stories I talke about on last
Saturday night's edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. But first, I wanted to let you know to
watch this website tomorrow, Thursday, April 2nd for some very big news... so big that I want to make sure I don't confuse
anybody by delivering it on April Fools' Day. This is no joke, and I don't want anyone mistakenly thinking it is. So, be
sure to come back tomorrow!
Okay, now for the program notes:
Crime in Cocoa: what's being done about it?
Late last Friday night in Cocoa, a 17-year-old girl named Maranese Ross was
shot and killed in a drive-by shooting,
an accidental victim who was unrelated to the target of the shooting. Stories like this are getting far too common in the
city of Cocoa as drugs and drug-related violence take over more and more of the town.
And what is the Cocoa City Council doing in response to this problem?
They're voting on outdoor ice rinks and dog parks.
It's always wonderful to see city governments who have their priorities straight, isn't it? Sure, innocent people are
suffering violent deaths in the streets of the city, but at least we'll be able to lose tens of thousands of dollars on an
outdoor ice skating rink in the "nice" part of the city this Christmas. I'm sure the drug dealers will enjoy it a lot
once they've chased the last law-abiding person out of town.
When a problem needs to be addressed, you can usually count on politicians to at least pay it lip service, to talk
about how seriously they're taking this issue and what they're going to do to fix it, even if they never actually get
around to fixing it. In this case, however, we're not even getting that. Is anyone on the Cocoa City Council even talking
about the city's out-of-control crime problem? I sure don't hear it.
And this problem is fixable. Just look at Melbourne, specifically two areas, South Melbourne and the Booker T. Washington
neighborhood north of Eau Gallie. The residents, police and City Council down in Melbourne over the past two decades have
worked well together to try to take back South Melbourne, and similar efforts have been under way in Booker T for the past
year. There's a lot of work still to be done, but both parts of Melbourne have improved noticeably.
Cocoa is different. The police officers on the street seem to be trying, but they're not getting any help. And because
the City Council doesn't seem to care, the residents are taking their cue from them and don't seem to care either. And
people are dying who don't need to die.
If the members of the Cocoa City Council won't take any action to save the lives of the residents of the city, they
need to get out and make way for people who will.
Ron Sellers pulls one last fast one on us
It's certainly appropriate for this story to have broken on April Fools' Day, but the news in the saga of Brevard's
Section 8 Housing chief Ron Sellers was looking a lot better when I covered this story on Saturday night. Last week, the
three Housing Authority boards here in Brevard County
voted on and approved a compromise deal regarding
the termination of Sellers for losing $2.5 million in federal funds and bankrupting the Brevard Housing Authority. Under
the deal, Sellers would be allowed to resign rather than being fired, but his last day would be April 1st instead of May
26th as he originally asked for in his resignation letter. And he would only get $26,000 for unused benefits instead of the
$107,000 amount that had been previously mentioned. It should've been an immediate firing with $0 for unused benefits, but
hey, I'll take what I can get. And kudos to the Cocoa Housing Authority Board in particular for pushing the Melbourne and
Brevard Boards into taking a harder stance on Sellers.
But as of today, April Fools' Day, it looks like Ron Sellers has once again made us all fools. Attorneys for the
Housing Authority have advised the Board to keep
Sellers on the payroll until the original resignation date of May 26th. Turns out his employment contract entitles him
to 90 days' notice before his employment with the Board ends. His contract basically pays him $50 an hour, and he's going
to keep getting paid to do nothing until May 26th.
To anyone who is using public housing assistance, I say to you this: do whatever it takes to get off of that assistance
as soon as possible. Work a second job, improve your educational status, cut back on your extras. The stability of your
housing situation is entirely dependent on people like Ron Sellers who will "lose" $2.5 million in federal funds and try to
hide it without a second thought, and on oversight boards who take weeks to finally decide to pay a guy like Ron Sellers
tens of thousands of dollars to go away quietly afterwards. Do you really want to depend on people like that?
Lies, damn lies and statistics
Did you know that if you live in a trailer park,
you're actually
homeless? Same if you live with relatives or in a hotel, even just for one night, or evacuated for a hurricane that
ended up missing your town and caused no damage to your house whatsoever. Mickey Kaus at Slate.com and James Taranto at the
Wall Street Journal helped blow this open, and proved that the next time someone tries to tell you that 1 in 50 children
in the USA are homeless, you'd better ask them what they mean by "homeless." Always define your terms.
Other stories
These atheist parents think they deserve lots of money because a government school teacher
taught their kids a religious song. Does
that go for any situation where a student is taught something their parents disagree with? I think a lot of
religious fundamentalists just got a great precedent for suing schools that teach evolution. Be careful what you wish for...
This senator thinks newspapers should have the option of
operating as non-profit educational organizations,
tax-exempt and everything. What an awful idea.
A Senate committee has approved a plan to
extend the shuttle program. Still a long way to
go, but it's a start.
What sort of a malcontent moves in next to an airport and then
complains about helicopter noise? Don't these
people know what the rest of us think of them?
Brevard's unemployment hits 10%... highest
since 1977!
If you're about to get away with a crime, you might want to wait until you've left the police station before
you call your friend on your cell phone to
brag about it.
So, you think parrots are just mimicing words and don't actually know what they're saying, eh?
Think again. This parrot actually saved a toddler's life.
I love these stories... armed robber walks into a Burger King and gets
shot and killed by a customer with a gun and
a concealed-carry permit. Think about all the tragedies over time that could've been prevented by a well-timed shot from
a good man with a firearm. It's cliched because it's true... guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Does fast food just make people
stupid or something?
Mystery: barrels of gasoline and detergent
are washing ashore in Central Brevard.
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes from 3/14
|
| | |
Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 10:15am
|
Sorry for the delay, everyone, but here are the program notes and links from
last Saturday night's edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL!
Go learn CPR. Don't wait.
If you heard the 7:00pm hour of my radio show last Saturday night, you already know why this is so important to me.
Here's the website for the Space Coast Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Go there right now and sign up for a
CPR course.
You already know it's something you should do, so why keep putting it off? You never know when you'll be called upon to try
to save someone's life, so make sure you're ready. Learn CPR. Thank you.
No radio show for Saturday 3/21
Due to the Orlando Magic tipping off for a game this Saturday night, March 21st at 7:00pm, there will not be an episode
of The Vince Young Show this weekend since AM-1300 WMEL is contractually obligated to carry all the Orlando
Magic games live on-the-air. Fortunately, I'll return to the microphone the following Saturday night, March 28th at 7:00pm
for three more hours of live, local talk on AM-1300 WMEL!
After March 28th, it gets weird though... WMEL has sports programming lined up for the first three Saturday nights in
April, the 4th, the 11th and the 18th. So right now it looks like I'll pre-empted on all three of those nights. If that
changes, I'll let you know here on the website, but that's what it looks like for now, which means that after my show on
Saturday 3/28, I won't return to the microphone until Saturday 4/25. Stay tuned...
Holiday On Ice, Part 2: This Time It's Personal
Oh, goodie... the Cocoa City Council voted unanimously to
bring back that stupid "outdoor" ice skating rink in
Cocoa Village for Christmas 2009. I guess losing
$46,700 in taxpayer money on the damn thing in 2008 wasn't enough.
Remember, they said last year that it would turn a profit and would draw in 18,000 people, but they only got 8,600
skaters, less than half of what they were projecting. Why? Because Cocoa ignored the fact that the Space Coast IcePlex in
Rockledge is just a 10-minute drive away from Cocoa Village with a rink six times bigger than the temporary one in Cocoa
Village, plus has far superior supporting facilities. And despite all that, Cocoa decided to charge the same price for
admission and skate rental as the Space Coast IcePlex!
But this time, they think they can get it right! And even if they still can't get Holiday On Ice to turn a profit,
hey, Councilman Jake Williams, Jr. isn't worried
according to Florida Today. "If you talk to the
citizens, they think it was money well-spent. You will have some who say it's a waste. You will have that if something
doesn't break even or if there's a slight profit. I look at the positive side. We can put on a nice event and still
maintain the same level of service throughout the city and not have any layoffs." Emphasis mine, just to make
sure you don't miss the fact that Councilman Williams seems to think that losing money on badly-run city events won't have
any consequences.
By the way, I'd love to know which citizens he's talked to, because I haven't met a single Cocoa resident yet who liked
this "outdoor" ice rink. I called it right last December,
and I'm calling it again: this will be a financial fiasco for the city of Cocoa. Just watch.
Red-light cameras: they're about money, not safety
Want to know how the city of Norcross, Georgia reduced red-light running by 80% and slashed the number of red-light
traffic crashes? They made yellow lights last an extra second
longer. That's it! They were required to do so by a new state law in Georgia which says that if you put up a red-light
enforcement camera at an intersection, you have to make the yellow lights at that intersection last one second longer than
the federal minimum standard. When that law went into affect in January, red-light running in Norcross plummetted, and the
city actually had to scrap their red-light cameras because they were no longer profitable! The city of Denver, Colorado
saw similar results from making their yellow lights longer as
well.
Turns out that according to a study by the Texas Transportation Institute, the vast majority of red-light camera tickets
are issued in cases where the light has been red for less than one
second. Make the yellow light one second longer, and all of those violations disappear. Oh, and by the way, the vast
majority of actual crashes caused by running a red light occurred when the light had been red for five seconds or
longer, which means that the people getting ticketed by these cameras aren't even the same drivers who are causing these
accidents!
Even more importantly... if you compare making the yellow light one second longer versus putting up a red-light
enforcement camera and see which one does better at reducing red-light running and red-light crashes, it's not even close.
Making the yellow light a second longer is the clear winner. If your true goal is to reduce crashes from drivers
running red lights, the single best thing you can do is make your yellow lights last a second longer.
Oh, and when was this study released? 2005. It's been out there for almost 4 years.
So, why did Palm Bay ignore this data when they voted to start installing red-light cameras at some intersections? And
why are other cities in Brevard considering cameras as well, such as Titusville, Melbourne and Satellite Beach? Because you
can't make any money off of making the yellow light longer... but you can make lots of money off of red light
cameras, even though their record of reducing crashes is spotty at best.
Congratulations, Palm Bay: you just sacrificed traffic safety in order to rake in more cash. Enjoy your blood money!
Other stories
An attorney for the Brevard County Housing Authority Board has confirmed that, yep, losing $2.5 million in federal
money and running Section 8 Housing in the red for months is
in fact a fireable offense, clearing the way for the termination of Chairman Ron Sellers. I still can't believe they
needed a lawyer to figure this out for them. If that's not a fireable offense, pray tell, what is?!?
According to a federal judge, I apparently
have the power to set legal precedent on any issue just by blogging about it. Good to know! Yes, yes, it was one of
those lawsuits alleging that President Barack Obama isn't actually a natural-born American citizen and thus isn't eligible
to be President, and no, I don't buy into that crazy theory, but that's beside the point. This judge truly believes that
if an issue has been debated enough online, it doesn't have to be settled in a court of law. By that standard, we can just
go ahead and shut down the entire court system right now, I guess, because every court is now totally redundant. Who needs
judges when ya got bloggers? I don't know who's crazier... the guy who filed this lawsuit, or the judge who picked that
reason for throwing it out. Yikes!
Speaking of, Republican Congressman Bill Posey from south Brevard has introduced legislation that would force all
future presidential candidates to prove their
eligibility to be President. Good. Right now, there is no such requirement in place! Hugo Chavez could move up
here right now and run for President, and if he could somehow get the votes, there'd be no way to stop him from taking the
oath of office and becoming President. You'd have to wait for him to take office, and then you'd have to wait for
him to take an executive action that directly affects you, and then you'd finally be allowed to file a lawsuit to
have him thrown out of office on the basis that he's not qualified to be President... at which point his hand-picked
Vice-President would take over. This is insane! There needs to be a process in place to verify eligibility before
someone takes office, and right now there is no such process. At all. Nothing. Kudos to Bill Posey for taking this issue
seriously.
Never mind... looks like General Motors won't
need a second federal bailout after all. When the Obama administration responded to GM's request for more cash with a
decided lack of enthusiasm, GM had no choice but to find other ways to keep themselves open somehow... ways that were there
all along but that GM wouldn't have bothered to find if they'd been given that second loan. Interesting how staring total
failure right in the face suddenly motivates you to make the correct-but-difficult choices you've been trying to avoid, eh?
Now, how about applying this same principle to, oh, every other company that's trying to get bailout cash from us right now?
Here are four
great
recent
examples
of the amateur hour that is President Obama's foreign policy. So much for the grown-ups being back in charge...
Word of advice: unless there's a hurricane on the way, leave
your hurricane shutters open. You're welcome.
New from Dairy Queen: the Chocolate Ajax Malt! It's hot!
Palm Bay man gets in trouble for calling the police about a phony noise complaint...
20 times in 5 minutes!
Virginia man pays his $350 electric bill...
every
penny of it.
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes for 3/7
|
| | |
Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 6:00pm
|
After a break last weekend to make room for coverage of Orlando Magic basketball, The Vince Young Show returns
tonight! Tune in to AM-1300 WMEL at 7pm for three hours of live, local talk. And be sure to call in to make your voice
heard! (321)631-1300.
Here's what we'll be talking about tonight.
 A
whole new County Commission
I can be very negative when it comes to politics, both on the air and on my website. I don't like being that way. But it's
been so easy over the past -- oh, really my entire life -- to look at our politicians in Washington DC, in Tallahassee and
in Viera and come to the conclusion that they're all nothing but a bunch of corrupt crooks making decisions that are bad
for us and good for them. And that goes for both parties and all ideologies.
That's why it's been so refreshing the past several months to watch Andy Anderson and Trudie Infantini change the entire
face of the Brevard County Commission since their election last November. Last week they were finally able to get
something added to the agenda for the next Commission meeting that they've been pushing for since November:
a moratorium on transportation impact fees on new
business construction. And earlier this week, the
proposal passed unanimously. Neither one of those would've been possible under the previous tax-happy County Commission,
and it got me thinking about how different the Commission has been ever since Anderson and Infantini joined the board.
Under the old Commission, with RINOs like Helen Voltz firmly in power, the County Commission was constantly looking for
new and creative ways to take more of our money away from us through higher taxes, new fees including the new fire fee, and
increasing existing fees. They would then turn around and waste that money on frivolous new programs with little oversight,
and basically acted as if our growing economy would never end and that our booming tax revenues would never stop growing.
Brevard County's budget is now over $1 billion a year; did you
know that? You can thank the previous Commission for that. They also wildly overspent on the EELS program, buying up huge
tracts of land with dubious environmental value and paying far more than the appraised value, then fencing it off and doing
nothing with it. And as a final gesture of contempt for all Brevardians before they left office, they ignored an advisory
panel and voted to keep the same auditing firm in place for the County, despite questions about the quality of their work
and despite lower-cost firms being available to take over. They literally did that in their final week in power, with
Florida Today running stories on this fiasco on November 17th and 18th, stories that have alas expired from their website
since then.
The tone has changed dramatically in Viera since then. Both Trudie Infantini and Andy Anderson campaigned on a platform
of reigning in county spending and bringing down taxes and fees, and they've been pushing those ideas with vigor ever
since. They're only two members on a Commission with five members, with moderate Republicans Chuck Nelson and Mary Bolin
and liberal Democrat Robin Fisher rounding out the rest of the board, so Infantini and Anderson aren't always enough to get
things done on their own. That's why the fire fees are still seperate from property taxes instead of lumped into the overall
County budget where they belong (Florida Today, 12/28/08), and why we're still occasionally doing things like paying an
analyst $5,000 to point out the obvious fact that our jails are overcrowded (Florida Today, 12/26/08).
But when Infantini and Anderson can pressure Nelson or Bolin or even Fisher to join them on an idea, good things happen.
The two-year moratorium on impact fees on business was their idea, and it was their tireless pressure since November that
finally got the idea brought up for this week's successful vote. They helped to nudge
the holdover County Manager Peggy Busacca into resigning in January to make room for someone more fiscally responsible,
and helped kill efforts to name another member of
the old guard, Tom Jenkins, as the interim manager. The Commission as a whole has also looked into
restructuring the county employee health insurance
plan to save taxpayers money, as well as delaying
construction of the Centra-Plex agricultural center as an unneeded luxury in a down economy, both signs that the
Commission's attitude on freely spending our money has changed dramatically. And they ended
the saga of the Wickham Park horse stables,
finally getting them open so we can at least get some return on the millions in taxpayer money that has already been spent
to build the darn things.
The fight isn't entirely over, not with Robin Fisher suggesting higher
county fees and adding beachside parking meters to raise revenue, two horrible economy-killing ideas that couldn't come
at a worse time. But Infantini and Anderson have publicly vowed to continue fighting any such propsals, and all they need
is one vote from Nelson or Bolin to save the day. Given how often Nelson and Bolin have been siding with Infantini and
Anderson on votes, it's clear they've heard the message from the voters loud and clear: it's a new day in Viera, and the
old days of wasteful spending and inflated fees are over.
Impact fees suspended for two years
In an excellent move to spur the local economy, the Brevard County Commission finalized a plan on Thursday to
suspend impact fees on new business and residential
construction for two years. Can you imagine the previous Commission approving this? Make no mistake about it: the election of
Trudie Infantini and Andy Anderson to the Commission last November showed a profound shift in the will of the voters, and
Chuck Nelson, Mary Bolin and Robin Fisher have heard all of us loud and clear. That's probably why both the initial vote
last week and the final vote this week were unanimous. Nobody wants to be seen as opposing this idea.
These impact fees were first put into place a few years ago as a charge on new business construction projects to be
spent on transportation funding. The idea was that new businesses and shopping centers increase the traffic load on our
roads and make new transportation projects needed, so the new businesses should have to foot the bill. Never mind that they
already pay a huge portion of the County's property tax revenue thanks to things like Save Our Homes and Amendment 1. And
never mind that the fees were charged anyway, regardless of the actual impact the new business would eventually have on
traffic, but anyway. There were also some people who thought growth in Brevard County was out of control and needed to be
curbed, and they saw impact fees as a way to do
just that.
Problem is, now we're in a down economy. The people who wanted to curb growth seemed to think the economy was never
going to slow down and saw growth as the enemy, and they got these impact fees put into place. And I guarantee you there
were potentially business owners and developers who decided not to build in Brevard County and went elsewhere to avoid
those impact fees, taking jobs with them and leaving behind undeveloped land with lower property values, which in turn led
to lower property tax revenues for Brevard. And now, with Brevard's
unemployment rate hitting 9.5%, we're seeing what happens when lots of people move to a desireable area and find that
there aren't any jobs waiting for them there.
Let's face it: Brevard County is a nice place to live. People want to move here. The weather's nice, the schools are
relatively good, pollution is low thanks to our clean industrial base and beach tourism, taxes are relatively low, and
traffic, while aggravating, is a far cry from the massive snarls in Orlando, Tampa and Miami. People are going to want to
move here and live here, and there's little we can do to stop them. And when they get here, we need to have jobs for them.
I don't understand why we ever made the foolish decision to stand at the gates of the county and guard against the people
who want to build the businesses that will provide those jobs.
So, kudos to Infantini and Anderson for pushing this proposal and forcing Nelson, Bolin and Fisher to go along with it.
Suspending impact fees on new businesses is the right thing to do right now. We need businesses to come here, set up shop,
and provide jobs, and developers who avoided Brevard County before due to those impact fees are going to give us another
look now. They'll turn low-value undeveloped plots of land into high-value developed plots that bring in more revenue in
property taxes, and they'll provide jobs for Brevardians who need them. And we'll stop treating all new businesses as if
their impact on traffic is going to be exactly the same regardless of location or business type, which was a truly foolish
and unfair way of treating the people who help drive our economy forward.
Oh, and if you're worried about the impact this will have on the County's tax revenue, don't be. In 2008, the grand
total of all impact fees collected in Brevard County was $5.8 million, a drop in the bucket of the County's $1 billion-plus
budget. So it wasn't even raising all that much money for Brevard anyway, and was probably doing more damage to our budget
thanks to lower property values from vacant land that never got developed because the impact fees chased potential
businesses away.
School funding notes
The Brevard School Board members voted unanimously last week to cut
their own yearly pay from a little over $38,000 down to $36,000 to match what a first-year teacher makes. It's pretty
much a symbolic move and it won't save the school district much money, but I applaud the School Board for doing it anyway.
Every little bit counts! And it's probably a big reason why the union for the school district's support staff
approved a wage freeze for their workers earlier
this week, meaning that people like cafeteria workers and bus drivers will see their pay stay the same for the next two
years. The teachers' union in Brevard also recently accepted a two-year pay freeze, so I guess some unions are able to
actually understand economic reality and common sense once in a while.
Also, I talked about this a couple of weeks ago on-the-air, and it looks like it's going to happen. A bill has been
introduced that would allow schools to use the
school-wide student-to-teacher ratio instead of a stricter class-wide ratio to determine compliance with the state's
class-size amendment. The switch to class-wide ratios was supposed to happen a few years ago, but the legislature keeps
stepping in and extending the use of the school-wide ratio to make things easier on the schools. And I think that's fair.
The purpose of the amendment was to lower class sizes in Florida, not to strangulate schools with yet another burdensome
rule to follow, and using the school-wide ratios has been working just fine. I'd be okay with making that easier ratio
permanent, to be honest, if not repealing the class-size amendment altogether.
Oh, and as if there was ever any doubt in the matter, a recent Florida Today article pretty much confirmed
the shell-game that is the Florida Lottery when
it comes to funding education. For every dollar of Lottery money that goes into school funding, the Legislature pretty
much takes a dollar away from the state's own funding of education to spend on something else. Don't believe me? Three
years before the Florida Lottery started, education spending was 61.5% of the state's budget. Five years after the Florida
Lottery started, education spending was 50.8% of the state's budget. The Lottery is just another general revenue source for
the state government, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Other stories:
Here's a genius idea: let's take sewage water, run it through some water treatments so that it's not as nasty, and
then pump it underground and store it right next to the aquifer for later use for irrigation during the dry season. No,
not in an underground tank or anything, just right into the ground. See, there's bedrock and different soil types and
stuff like that down there which will keep the treated sewage from ever mixing into the aquifer or the Indian River Lagoon.
Nothing could possibly go wrong! Sure, it's all experimental, and yeah, we don't have a complete picture of exactly how
things look down there, and no, rock and soil aren't entirely waterproof, but we're certain nothing could ever possibly go
horribly, horribly wrong with this idea! Okay, sarcasm off. The
City of Rockledge is seriously considering this insane idea. This needs to be stopped dead in its tracks. When someone
tries to tell you nothing could possibly go wrong, be very afraid.
Brevard Housing Authority Director Ron Sellers has tendered his
resignation to the Board, effective late May. Sellers has been under a LOT of pressure after losing $2.5 million in
government funds and trying to hide the fact that the Housing Authority has been running in the red since last year. And
it's still not over, with the Housing Authority board members looking
for a way to fire him and get Sellers out of there even sooner. Good.
The City of Cocoa is looking into buying a
vacant tract of land to turn it into an off-leash dog park. In this economy, is this really the best thing to be
spending money on? Why can't they wait for the economy to improve and then just convert some park land that they already
own into a dog park? But hey, this is the same city government that lost money on an outdoor ice skating rink and wants to
do it again next year, so I shouldn't be too surprised.
The Miami abortion clinic owner who took an accidentally-born premature baby and threw it out with the garbage
has been charged with two
felonies, practicing medicine without a license and tampering with evidence. It oughta be murder charges, but this is
at least something.
(EDIT: 3/8/2009 at 9:45am - Here's a few more stories I mentioned on the show last night.)
President Obama's earmark-loaded $410 billion omnibus budget bill passed the House of Representatives this week...
Republican Rep. Bill Posey voted no, while
Democratic Rep. Suzanne Kosmas voted yes. No surprise there. Fortunately, the Republicans have the bill tied up in the
Senate and aren't letting it get through without a fight.
"This is
an emergency! My McNuggets are an emergency," she said to the 911 operator.
Former state representative Bob Allen has
finally dropped his appeals of his conviction for sexual solicitation. Good. Maybe there's still time for him to
salvage some of his dignity.
The state of Washington is mailing out checks for $1 each to
hundreds of thousands of needy residents. Why? So they can claim they receive assistance from the state, which will in turn
qualify them for more assistance from a federal program. Only government...
Dude. You followed some guy for 30 miles on the interstate after he cut you off, and
then sicced your dog on him at a gas
station? Grow up!
How sad is this? At only 8pm, this guy was so drunk that he passed out
in his car while sitting at a red light and slept through 6 light changes. Time to reconsider the course of your life,
man.
|
|
Reminder: The Vince Young Show returns this Saturday night!
|
| | |
Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 8:30am
|
If you tried to tune in to The Vince Young Show last Saturday night, you heard
Orlando Magic basketball instead. WMEL is contracted to carry all the Magic games, so that meant I got pre-empted.
But the schedule is clear for tomorrow night, Saturday, March 7th, so that means I'll be back on the air on AM-1300
WMEL at 7pm for three more hours of live, local talk! Be sure to listen, or better yet, call in! (321)631-1300.
I'll try to get some preview notes up here on the website later today or tonight. Watch this space...
|
| | |
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 11:45am
|
So, I went to the town hall meeting on school funding at the King Center last night.
Got there at 7pm. Left there by 7:30pm. What a colossal waste of time.
I was absolutely blown away by the number of people who showed up, and that was at least somewhat encouraging. By the
time I got there, they'd already locked the doors because there was no more room inside, so they set up speakers and a
couple of display screens outside the King Center for the overflow crowd.
But almost everyone there was on a mission: Save (insert name of school that my kid happens to go to)
School! That was it. Nobody seemed to be there to ask any tough questions about funding priorities, or eliminating wasteful
spending, and certainly nobody asking why the next superintendent is getting a raise or why
we have three area superintendents on the payroll under the overall superintendent. It was all "Don't close my
school! Close someone else's!"
(I hope to God we don't make school-closing decisions based on how many signs people were holding up for each school.
"Okay, I count 12 signs for Seaside but only 8 signs for Hoover. I guess we'll close Hoover then.")
Thousands and thousands of people, all missing the point entirely. It's not about how much money is spent... it's
about how that money gets spent. We could double school funding tomorrow, and if it all gets spent on bureaucrats'
salaries in Viera, it won't do one bit of good. And how the money gets spent mainly gets determined by the School
Board. But the School Board members weren't up on the stage, just Brevard's delegation to the State House and State Senate
in Tallahassee from what I could see on the outdoor screens. There may have been School Board members in the crowd, but
not up on the stage. And from what I could hear, every one of our esteemed legislators simply got up there and said they
would do everything they could to bring home as much funding for Brevard County's schools as possible, which is the exact
same thing every other county's delegation is going to be saying for the next three months. And none of that talk is going
to magically make any extra money materialize for schools or make sure it's spent wisely, so all it's good for is earning
applause from the crowd.
Oh, the applause... true story. As I wandered around outside the King Center to take in the scene and figure out if it
was still possible to get inside, I rounded a corner of the building and hit an area where the sound from the outdoor
speakers wasn't carrying very well at all. But there were still a lot of people hanging out there anyway, holding their
Save X School signs and talking. One of the politicians must've said something popular, because a burst of cheering erupted
from around the corner from the people who could hear the speech. After a second or two, everyone around me started
cheering too, even though nobody around me could hear what had just been said. Then one person next to me, a grown man a
little older than me, stopped cheering. He turned to his friend, about the same age, and yelled over the cheering,
"What are we cheering for again?"
The friend shouted back, "I have no idea!"
Then they both started cheering again.
I'd say that summed up the entire night right there.
|
| | |
Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 7:15am
|
With the Orlando Magic tipping off a game at 7:00pm on Saturday 2/28, The Vince
Young Show will be pre-empted on AM-1300 WMEL.
But don't fret! I'll be back on the air on Saturday, March 7th at 7:00pm for three more hours of live, local talk.
I'll also still do a few blog updates later this week, and of course I'll be at Florida Today's town-hall meeting about
Brevard's school budget cuts at the King Center tonight at 7pm. Hopefully I can get an answer as to why
the new superintendent will be making $22,000 more per year than the old one, even though
we're talking about laying off teachers and closing schools.
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes for 2/21
|
| | |
Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 4:30pm
|
Get ready for three hours of live, local talk! Here's a preview of what
we'll be talking about tonight on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL from 7pm to 10pm. Oh, don't forget
to call in during the show! (321)631-1300.
Gun paranoia strikes again
See the photo to the left? That photo almost got a teacher fired
in Wisconsin earlier this month when she put it up on her Facebook page. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and
Betsy Ramsdale's job was saved, but not until she had been
placed on administrative leave with pay for a week.
Then there's the case of Colorado high school student Marie Morrow, who was expelled from her school earlier this month for violating Colorado's
zero-tolerance law for weapons in school. Her crime? She had fake wooden prop rifles from her Young Marines drill team in
her car in the school parking lot. She had to appeal her case to the local school superintendent, who
reduced her
expulsion to a six-day suspension, basically time-served, and allowed her to return to school immediately. But the
suspension remains on her disciplinary record.
And finally, there's this local story from Palm Bay. At first glance, it's
a mildly entertaining crime caper, nothing
more. Police respond to a home burglary and vandalism case and follow a trail of candy wrappers directly from the scene of
the crime to the front door of another house, where they found a group of teenagers who confessed to the burglary and
turned over the stolen loot. Recovered items included computers and other electronics, plus two firearms. Happy ending,
right?
But check the Comments on FloridaToday.com, specifically
this
comment from a user named DankRimski on 2/18/2009 at 11:34: "Why did they give the firearms back to a guy who doesn't
secure them?"
Earth to DankRimski: he did secure them. They were locked in his house, which these teenagers broke into in
direct violation of one of the most basic laws in our country, and stole his guns in direct violation of another one of the
most basic laws in our country. And instead of blaming the people who broke two laws, you're blaming the law-abiding gun
owner who did nothing wrong? How dare he be the victim of a home break-in!
What is it about the very concept of firearm ownership that makes some people lose all common sense and perspective?
I have only one quibble with the teacher Betsy Ramsdale: gun safety. The first rule of firearms is that
every gun is loaded, and the second rule of firearms is that every gun is loaded. Pointing a gun right at someone so they
can take a picture down the barrel of your rifle is reckless, and it's a poor example for a teacher to set for her
students, some of whom will go on to own their own firearms someday. The school district was absolutely right to tell her
to pull the photo down from her Facebook profile. But they didn't do it for that reason. They did it because parents and
staffers complained that she was encouraging gun violence, and they basically suspended her for a week while they
investigated her. I get the feeling most of those same people would complain if the photo just showed her holding the rifle
off to the side in a safer pose. Guns are evil, don't you know.
As for the high school student Marie Morrow, technically, yes, having fake wooden prop rifles in your car is against
Colorado's zero-tolerance law because they can be mistaken for real rifles. She should've known the law, especially living
so close to Columbine. But why does the law call for an automatic expulsion over something like this? This could've all
been resolved in an hour. Someone sees the prop rifles in the back seat of the car and reports them, you call in Marie
Morrow, she explains what the deal is, and you have her drive the prop rifles back home and come back to school. She misses
a class or two and learns her lesson, and that's it! It's over! Expelling her over a simple mistake like this is so
overkill, it makes Gilbert Gottfried look restrained by comparison!
Find me one news story anywhere in the world where a gun killed somebody all by itself, with no intervention at all by
a human being. Just one. Guns in and of themselves are not dangerous. They only become dangerous in the hands of the wrong
person. None of these three people are dangerous, and yet there are people out there who want all three of them to be
treated like criminals.
Gov. Crist: let's make our property tax system MORE complicated!
So first we passed Save Our Homes to keep property taxes low, and homeowners who stayed in the same home in Florida for
years and years were happy. But people who moved from one part of Florida to another weren't happy, because they were
getting stuck paying the property taxes that the other people weren't paying because the state of Florida still had to get
that money from somewhere. (What, cut spending? What sort of nonsense is that?)
So then we passed Amendment 1 last year to make Save Our Homes "portable," and those people were happy, because now
they could move from one part of Florida to another and still keep their Save Our Homes property tax exemption. But
first-time home-buyers from within Florida, business owners, snowbirds, and renters weren't happy, because now they
were getting stuck paying the property taxes that the other people weren't paying because the stateof Florida still had to
get that money from somewhere. (Spending cuts? How brutish and uncivilized!)
So now, Governor Charlie Crist and State Senator Mike Haridopolos want to take our already ridiculously convoluted
property tax system and make it even more
convoluted!
Guys... stop tinkering with a bad system and just
replace it with something else. Something better. We already fund the state government quite well with a retail sales tax.
Why not let cities and counties fund themselves the same way, like with a localized version of the
FairTax?
Other stories
New Brevard Tax Collector Lisa Cullen is busy demoting
experienced workers and promoting inexperienced campaign supporters. I understand the desire to bring in your own team,
but some of these moves just seem blatantly calculated. Lisa, I hope for your sake that these people turn out to be up to
the job.
Going to the town-hall meeting on
Brevard's school budget cuts on Monday night? I am. It's at 7:00pm at the King Center in Melbourne, and hopefully I can
get an answer as to why we're giving the next superintendent a raise while we're talking
about laying off teachers and closing schools. I e-mailed a School Board member about it several days ago; no response.
Oh, those layoffs? They might violate the
state's class-size amendment. And Richard DiPatri says many of the layoffs would have to target
math and science teachers in order to protect
art and music electives, but that actually makes some sense to me. If you have 3 math teachers and only 1 music teacher,
cutting the music teacher leaves you with nobody to teach music class. Cutting 1 math teacher still leaves 2 left to
teach the classes.
Guy gets bit by a rattlesnake in a Walmart garden center and sues, saying Walmart
should've taken steps to prevent rattlesnake bites. What steps? It's Florida. It's outdoors. We have rattlesnakes.
Sometimes they bite people. What is Walmart supposed to do?
Sheriff Parkers says the Titusville courthouse needs
security upgrades badly. I like his Plan B better: consolidate all criminal cases in Viera, which is far better equipped
to handle them.
Did you know that in 2007 and 2008, only 8%
of foreclosures in Brevard County were actually someone's primary home? The rest were second homes or investment
properties. The "housing crisis" suddenly doesn't look so bad.
GM and Chrysler
ask for billions of dollars from the government. Wait, is this a repeat?
Yep, the Brevard Housing Authority is
still missing $2.5 million, and Executive Director Ron Sellers still somehow has a job.
Brevard County's Riverside Bank says
they're not the ones that got closed down!
Bank owner sells $60 million in bank shares -- then
gives it all to his employees. Whoa!
Someone just broke into your house? No problem... just
steal their getaway van!
|
| | |
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 11:00pm
|
Okay, maybe I'm just missing something here.
On my radio show last Saturday night (as well as in my program notes), I broke the news
that the Brevard County School Board had approved a $22,000 pay increase for the new Superintendent who will be replacing
Richard DiPatri when he retires this summer, even though the school budget is in such dire straits that they're talking
about laying off teachers and closing schools. I
pieced together that news from two different Florida Today articles from last week, and I was kind of surprised that nobody
there at Florida Today had put two and two together, but I figured eventually they would.
They still haven't.
Neither has anyone else, either in the traditional media or in any of the alternative media here in Brevard.
Am I literally the only person in Brevard County who has noticed this? Or do I have something way wrong?
The fact that I'm the only person so far talking about something this big makes me want to get all my ducks in a row,
so here we go. Here's how Florida Today initially broke this story in two parts without even realizing it.
On Thursday, February 12th, Florida Today ran a story with the headline "DiPatri:
Sacrifice pay for jobs' sake" by Megan Downs. The story was about Superintendent Richard DiPatri agreeing to give up
his performance bonus for the 2008-2009 school year to help with the budget. Four paragraphs in, Downs wrote this:
|
Last year, he received an $18,801 bonus. DiPatri's base salary is $217,941. |
|
On that same day, February 12th, another story ran in Florida Today with the headline
"School board seeks input" by Michelle Spitzer.
The story was about the School Board asking the public to give their opinions on what to look for in the next Superintendent.
Seven paragraphs in, Spitzer wrote this:
|
This past Tuesday, the school board voted for the new superintendent's salary to be advertised in the range of $240,000,
which does not include benefits and retirement. |
|
So, the current Superintendent makes a base yearly salary of $217,941 while the next Superintendent will have a base
yearly salary of $240,000. That's an increase of $22,059 for the Superintendent's pay at the exact same time we're talking
about laying off teachers and closing down schools.
And the School Board expects us to believe them when they say they've trimmed all the fat from their budget?
Granted, $22,059 is a drop in the bucket compared to the size of the school district's overall budget. But each $22,000
drop has a way of adding up fast when you start putting them together. How many other $22,000 drops have they missed in
the budget?
Hey, School Board: show me the money!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes for 2/14
|
| | |
Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 4:30pm
|
(EDIT - 2/15/2009 at 10:00am - I goofed last night! At 7:00pm,
WMEL was still airing a high school basketball game. But the game ended at 8:30pm, so I was still able to sneak in 90
solid minutes of live-and-local talk until 10:00pm. And I should have a full 3 hours again this coming Saturday,
February 22nd. Sorry for the confusion!)
Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a preview of what
we'll be talking about tonight on The Vince Young Show, live-and-local on AM-1300 WMEL from 7pm to 10pm.
Brevard School Board considers budget cutbacks
Brevard school Superintendent Richard DiPatri met with parents at Viera on Friday to
discuss major cutbacks in the upcoming budget for
Brevard's schools. It's possible that up to $80 million will have to be cut from the next budget, and
that has DiPatri talking about possibly laying off 378 teachers and another 568 non-teacher school district employees,
plus eliminating all sports except at the varsity level, eliminating other after-school programs, cutting school resource
officers, and even closing a handful of schools.
What I'm not hearing is much talk of cutting back at the School Board headquarters in Viera. DiPatri did promise to
give up his performance bonus for the 2008-2009
school year, and he asked all of Brevard's school district employees to consider accepting lower pay so that people
won't have to be laid off. But maybe some people do need to be laid off. Government is not a jobs program. Everyone who
gets a paycheck from any government agency is there at the expense of you, you, you, me, and anyone else who pays taxes to
that government. They should only get that paycheck if their job is vital to the continued operation of that agency. If
it's not, then I'm sorry, but there is no justification for them to take money out of our pockets so they can keep working
in their cushy government office.
But instead of laying off bureaucrats, the School Board is looking at laying off teachers, cutting after-school programs,
and closing schools. Meanwhile, after Richard DiPatri retires this summer,
the next superintendent will make $240,000 a year,
not counting benefits, bonuses or a retirement package. That's a raise over DiPatri's current base salary of $217,941! That's
also about as much as the superintendents make in
Charlotte or in Albequerque, and it would make our superintendent's pay the 7th-highest among the ten largest school
districts in Florida, even though we're only the 10th-largest school district in the state. That's also nearly seven times
as much as the salary for a new teacher. Is any superintendent worth more than seven teachers? I think not. And with
decisions like this, I'm not at all convinced that the School Board has the right priorities with this budget.
State looks for new sources of tax revenue
According to a new report from the State Senate, property tax revenues
dropped 2.1% in 2007 and another 3.8% in 2008,
ending 32 straight years in which property tax revenues increased an average of 10% each year. The drops came about as a
result of the state legislature mandating rate cuts plus last year's voter-approved constitutional amendment to lower tax
rates, combined with plummeting home values.
A lower tax bill should be good news, but it really isn't. (Yes, I really just typed that.)
First of all, not everybody's tax bills dropped. As has often been pointed out, all of the various and sundry attempts
to cap property taxes over the years have led to a messy, complicated system that creates all sorts of inequities. If you're
a long-time established homeowner who has lived in the same house in Florida for 20 years, you're in great shape. But if
you're, say, a young native Floridian in his late 20s who recently got married and is looking to buy his first home, you,
my friend, are going to pay through the nose in property taxes. Ditto if you own a vacation home in Florida, or if you own
a business and own the property your business sits on. Long-time homeowners get all the tax breaks, and everyone else gets
all the tax bills. It's a horrible revenue system that seriously needs to be replaced. (Localized version of the
FairTax, anyone?)
Second of all, when government's tax revenues start to drop, we all know how governments react... rather than trimming
down bloated and redundant bureaucracies or eliminating unneeded spending, they instead slash essential services and try
to raise taxes.
Raise taxes? Oh look,
right
on cue! Let's apply the state sales tax to Internet purchases, raise cigarette taxes so that the state government makes
more of a profit on tobacco than the eeeeeevil tobacco companies, and get rid of sales tax exemptions, all at a time when
everybody's disposable income is dropping due to salary cuts and lay-offs! That'll end well!
Brevard Section 8 still missing $2.5 million
The federal Housing and Urban Development agency has had to step
in with emergency funding for Brevard County's Section 8 housing program to prevent 380 families from losing their
rental payment assistance. Ron Sellers, who is the executive director of the Brevard Family of Housing Authorities and
basically runs Section 8 in Brevard, had to reveal last week that he's lost track of $2.5 million dollars and has had the
agency running in the red since last May, and he got grilled for it this week by the Melbourne City Council and by the
Brevard County Housing Authority Board. But don't worry, Sellers is on the case:
he's hired a temp to go find that money!!!
How does this clown still have a job? He's either incompetent for losing track of $2.5 million, or he's a crook. I
don't care which one turns out to be the case. Fire Ron Sellers now!
Cocoa Village "outdoor" ice rink might return next year!
Hey, remember that stupid "outdoor" ice skating rink in Cocoa Village last Christmas? You know,
the one where you could pay $10 to step inside of a dingy, sad-looking tent and skate around on a tiny slab of ice, even
though there was a full-size ice rink six-times larger inside of a much nicer building less than 15 minutes away that
charged about the same?
Guess what: it failed to turn a profit, and
cost the city of Cocoa $46,000 in taxpayer money.
Guess what else: they're thinking of doing it
again for Christmas 2009!
President Obama's Government Stimulus Package
Yep, Obama's $787 billion government stimulus package has passed in
the House (Posey: NO / Kosmas: YES) and in the
Senate
(Martinez: NO / Nelson: YES), and now just awaits Obama's signature to become law. Curious about what's in it? Newt
Gingrich's fantastic organization American Solutions has the
full text of the bill up on their
site, all 1,434 pages of it. (Be warned, the file size is HUGE.) Think anybody in Congress actually read all of it? Or any
of it? Right. But Jamie Dupree from The Neal Boortz Show skimmed it, and he has
a handy summary for you on his
own blog. Don't worry, there's no earmarks... but only because bypassed
the usual earmark process and just wrote all of their little pet pork projects right into the bill so they couldn't
technically be called "earmarks." And don't worry about that
massive government-owned database of every American's medical records that will be created thanks to this bill, even
though that has absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy.
Other stories
Of the 14,000 foreclosures in Brevard County in the past two years,
only 8% were actually people's primary homes.
The other 92% were vacation homes or investment properties.
A Wisconsin bank that took federal bailout money and then tried to spend it on an employee trip to Puerto Rico
has changed their mind. Good.
An Osceola County School Board member wants to sell
billboards on school property to raise revenue. Yeah, just wait until Captain Morgan or Fairvilla Adult Megastore wants
to buy one.
Republican Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp will
have to repay $12,974 to the state after his family used state jets for two years to fly between their Fort Myers home
and Tallahassee against state law, as well as flying to other destinations around the state. Oops!
You know the Octo-Mom in California, that lady who gave birth to artificially-implanted octuplets and who already
had six kids anyway? And remember how she said she wasn't on welfare? Yeah... apparently,
she thinks food stamps aren't welfare.
So, you hate your restaurant job, but if you quit, you can't get unemployment. Whaddya do? This guy thought he'd be
clever and trash the restaurant so they'd fire him, and since
he didn't quit, he'd be able to collect unemployment! I guess he didn't know about the "fired-with-cause" exception. Oh,
and he got arrested too. Loser!
Dude
robs a gas station in southwest Florida. And then runs out of gas.
After
a third of a mile. Yes, I'm such a nerd that I Mapquested it. You're welcome.
Want a bonding moment with your 8-year-old son? Let
him drive your van!
|
|
The Vince Young Show: program notes from 2/7
|
| | |
Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 5:45pm
|
The Vince Young Show made its grand return to the radio airwaves last Saturday night on AM-1300 WMEL! Kind of a
rough start due to working with an unfamiliar control board, but I managed to fill 3 hours while sounding semi-coherent,
so hey, I'll take it. And I'll get the chance to sound a bit more polished next Saturday night, 7pm to 10pm on AM-1300 WMEL.
As promised, here are links to some of the stories we discussed on the air, so you can make sure I'm not just feeding
you a total line. :)
Making Brevard's animal shelters "no-kill"
The County Commission voted 5-0 last week to look
into converting all of Brevard's official county animal shelters to "no-kill" shelters. Those shelters euthanized
well over 9,000 animals in 2007, so that will be 9,000 more animals that will have to be fed, sheltered, and cared for each
year. And how exactly will this be paid for? Andy Anderson is seemingly the only Commissioner asking that question out loud,
and the only real answer he has is that we'll have to find more volunteers for the shelters and push pet adoption programs.
Based on Matt Reed's analysis of how a
similar effort worked over in Hillsborough County, I'm not optimistic. They increased adoptions significantly, but not
enough to offset the tide of incoming animals, so they simply had no choice but to continue euthanizing almost as many
animals as before to make sure they didn't run out of space. And if a major metropolitan area with far more resources
couldn't make this work during better economic times, what makes us think we can make this work in Brevard during a
recession without spending more tax money?
Don't get me wrong... finding a way to reduce euthanizations is a good thing. But just because a deed is good doesn't
mean government should force the taxpayers to pay for that good deed... especially while people are losing their jobs and
struggling to pay their mortgages. "Sorry, we know you need money to pay your bills, but this shelter dog gave us
such a cute look today, and we just couldn't bring ourselves to euthanize him, so we need to take your money to feed
him instead." If people want to support no-kill animal shelters, they can make charitable donations to private no-kill
shelters voluntarily.
Red-light cameras
The Titusville City Council is considering
installing red-light cameras at several city intersections, while Palm Bay is already in the processing of installing
them at six major intersections. Bad idea... these cameras are usually manned by private companies that get a commission on
every ticket they send out and collect on, which actually gives them an incentive to send out incorrect and
improper tickets in the hopes that people just pay them without bothering to fight them. That leads to situations like a
city with 38,500 residents sending out
45,000 red-light
camera tickets last year, or Orlando mixing up letters and
numbers on license plates and ticketing the wrong cars, even in cases where the car registration info clearly does not
match the car in the photo. And while broadside right-angle crashes go down at monitored intersections, rear-end crashes
go up thanks to drivers who slam on their brakes for yellow lights. These cameras are bad news, they don't work right, and
they don't have the desired effect on traffic safety. They're about nothing more than raking in extra revenue for the
government.
Obama's stimulus package
A deal has been reached in the Senate on President Obama's new
stimulus package, but it's loaded with spending
that has little to do with the economy, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Offices says
it will do more harm
than good. And a Rasmussen poll shows only
37% support for the stimulus package. But Obama doesn't
seem to be listening. So, we're moving further towards socialism, but as Margaret Thatcher once pointed out,
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Other stories:
A botched abortion in Florida leads to the baby being born accidentally. Do you A.) call an ambulance to take the
severely premature baby to the hospital to try to save its life, or B.) wrap
the baby up in a plastic bag and throw it out with the garbage? I thought this was a no-brainer, but apparently the
clinic owner has no brain... and no heart either.
Fiscal mismanagement at Brevard County's Section 8 housing agency
will cause 380 families to lose their rental
assistance checks. How does someone lose $2.5 million? Yikes.
Families in West Cocoa bought homes that are on land 3 feet below the average level of the St. John's River, and
are apparently surprised to discover that this
makes their homes flood-prone. And now they want the County Commission to spend our tax money to buy them out of their
homes. Sorry... next time, try researching that house a little more before you buy it.
Rockledge is building a new $4 million
police headquarters, and they're timing it perfectly. A rare case of a government being smart with debt decisions.
Apparently, people are still afraid of the
KKK. All they have to do is drop off a few pamphlets at an apartment complex, and people react like it's the end of
the world. C'mon... it's 2009. The Klan is a shell of its former self now. It's like a 17-year-old declawed toothless
arthritic cat. If it hisses at you, who cares?
Obama wants executive pay limits for any
company that wants bailout money from the government. Good. If it keeps companies from asking for bailout money in the
first place, I'm all for it.
Obama's nominees are running into tax problems,
but everyone's missing the point. The point isn't that they didn't pay their taxes. The point is that the tax code is so
damn complicated that the IRS itself doesn't even understand it, let alone people in other high-ranking governmental
positions. FairTax, anyone?
Congress, in their infinite wisdom, has delayed the digital TV transition yet again to June 2009... or did they?
Apparently, stations have the option to stick with the original February
deadline instead. Only Congress can take an idea that will already confuse people and make it even more
confusing.
Be careful with your tax return... people are accidentally
double-claiming the economic stimulus check that they already got last year. The IRS will correct it for you, but it'll
delay your refund check.
Two different stories on hacked electronic highways signs, here
and here.
|
| | |
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 11:45am
|
I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am
returning to radio!!!
The Vince Young Show will air every Saturday night from 7pm to 10pm on the Talk-To-Me Station AM-1300 WMEL, broadcasting
from Cocoa, FL. The debut episode will be this Saturday, February 7th, which is just 3 days from now, so make sure you tune
in!
Better yet, make sure you call in! (321)631-1300. We'll talk about local politics, national news, and anything that
affects your life here in Brevard County, especially Central Brevard. The media in this county tends to focus more on
Melbourne and Palm Bay since more people live there, so there's a lot that goes on in Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Rockledge and
Merritt Island that gets overlooked. I want to make sure everyone in Brevard can have their voice heard.
As Saturday gets closer, I'll start updating this site with links to some of the news stories I plan to discuss, along
with my initial thoughts on those stories. And if there's something you want me to look into or talk about, send me an
e-mail at
vince.young@gmail.com.
Talk to you on Saturday night! :)
|
|
Another word from the Odd Bird
|
| | |
Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 8:30am
|
As has been
previously mentioned, Cake Buzzard is
the online name of my fiance, and over the past two months she's actually been more active with her blogging than I have.
And that's good news for you. I get such a kick out of her pithy writing style, and I often wish I had her ability to
write in 10 words what it takes me 50 words to write.
Three great examples:
Her musings on the
2008 election, dental surgery, and discussing politics with strangers at weddings. Somehow, it's all connected.
Who knew?
An amusing update on the
status of our wedding plans. (For the record? Food's taken care of. Still working on the music. Oh, and renting a tux
might help, eh?)
This really isn't fair. I want
to stay grumpy about the fact that we just elected as our next president a man whose policies may turn out to be the
closest to pure socialism in our nation's history. But it's hard to maintain a good bad mood when I read stuff like this.
If that hooks you, you may want to scroll down her page a bit and watch her take on the Wedding-Industrial Complex as
well.
(Geez, I love her.)
|
| | |
Saturday, December 27th, 2008 at 10:00am
|
So, have you heard about the city of Cocoa and
their brilliant plan for a temporary "outdoor" ice
skating rink in Cocoa Village? I've been quietly watching this story develop ever since they announced it earlier this
year, and the only question in my head has been, not if it would be a colossal flop, but how big of a
colossal flop it would be.
I put "outdoor" in quotes because the only way to keep the ice frozen was to stick the rink inside a giant tent, which
kinda negates the whole point of an outdoor ice rink in a riverside city park, doesn't it? No riverfront vista, no
soaring views of the causeway, just boring white canvas walls. And it's only 3,300 square feet, which is one-sixth the size
of the Space Coast Iceplex's 20,000 square-foot rink in Rockledge... which, coincidentally, is at-most a 15-minute drive
from Cocoa Village. If you're going to pay $10 in admission and skate rental fees to go ice-skating indoors, wouldn't you
rather drive a little further for a rink that's six times bigger with a better snack bar, superior facilities, and actual
restrooms instead of Port-a-Johns, all for the exact same price? I would.
The city budgeted $140,000 of taxpayer money to pay for this boondoggle, and later had to up the budget by another
$15,500 because they forgot that they'd have to hire someone to manage the rink on-site. (Bravo!) They hoped to offset that
total cost of $155,500 through admission fees, skate rentals, a concession stand, and advertising from local business
sponsors. But apparently, Cocoa City Councilwoman Pat McCrary wasn't too worried about that back in November, as she told
Florida Today that the city doesn't break even on its Fourth of July fireworks display each year either.
Uh, Pat? There's a difference: people actually want to come to the Fourth of July fireworks show.
Contrast that with this silly "outdoor" skating rink. The initial estimate from the city was that 18,000 people would
show up during the rink's six-week run, from Thanksgiving through January 4th. We've gone through five of those six weeks,
with eight days to go. And how many people have actually gone into this dreary tent and skated on this undersized rink?
Try 5,800 over the past five weeks.
To meet the estimate of 18,000 skaters, they'll need to get another 12,200 people to show up in this final week after
getting less than half that number for the previous five weeks. If that actually happens, it probably means hell has
frozen over too. They're counting on attendance spiking now that school is out, but school has been out for the past week
already anyway, and that doesn't seem to have helped attendance much so far.
And while the city doesn't directly break even from the Fourth of July, the economic impact of the ginormous crowds who
flock to Cocoa Village for the fireworks display is nothing short of staggering. That's buckets of cash for all of the
local businesses there, which leads to higher tax revenue for the city on the back-end. I guarantee you, the city makes a
profit from the Fourth of July when you factor in the economic impact and the resulting boost to the tax-base of Cocoa
Village. Compared with the measly attendance at this joke of an ice rink, it's not even close.
But hey, at $10 a pop, 5,800 skaters means $58,000. Cocoa spent a total of $155,500 in taxpayer money on this thing, so
that's just $97,500 to go to break even. Add in concession stand revenue and local sponsorships, and maybe, just maybe,
they can still break even. But I'm not optimistic, because they're going to need a big spike in rink attendance during
this final week to get there.
Unless a miracle happens in the next week, we need to give this stupid idea the cold shoulder next Christmas.
|
|
Penny-wise, pound-foolish
|
| | |
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 11:45pm
|
Just when you think government can't get any more
arrogant...
Okay, let's say you're a revenue collector for a city that charges its residents for their water usage every month. And
it comes to your attention that your automated bill-collection software has automatically sent out a demand-for-payment,
at the cost of 42 cents in postage, to a blind woman who mistakenly underpaid an earlier water bill by -- get this -- a
penny. One penny. One red cent. And just as it does with all the other demands-for-payment letters it sends out, the
automated bill-collection software threatened this woman with late fees and possibly even a lien on her house if she didn't
pay this one-cent balance by a specific date.
Do you...
A.) Apologize for the oversight, waive the penny, and set up your bill-collection software so that it doesn't
bother sending out letters for balances lower than the cost of a postage stamp, or...
B.) Refuse to budge and tell the local newspaper that this lady owes the city a penny, and she's going to pay the
city that penny or face the consequences.
The City Collector of South Attleboro, Massachusetts,
chose Option B.
She chose... poorly.
Yes, a debt is a debt and a bill is a bill. But there are so many better ways they could have handled this, ways that
wouldn't have turned this city's government into an international laughing-stock. (The story was linked up on the
Drudge Report yesterday.) It was a one-time situation involving a blind
lady, fer cryin' out loud, and was probably just a mistake on her part. If you can't make a one-time exception and
waive that penny in this case, when can you? And if you insist on sticking with the principle of the matter, fine. Tack
that penny onto the next month's bill and let her pay it then. But threatening her with late fees and a lien on her house
over such a tiny balance is just utterly ridiculous. It's the sort of act that only makes sense if you're an arrogant
government agent who believes that your job is to rule and reign over the taxpayers rather than serving them.
Reading this story almost immediately brought to my mind a more local example of extreme government arrogance, the
multi-year fight between the town of Melbourne Beach and Thijs Stelling, the owner of the Melbourne Beach Chevron.
You remember the story... several years ago, Stelling wanted
to buy the land next door to expand his locally-owned-and-operated gas station and service station to have a bigger
convenience store and more service bays. He lined up the financing to get it done, but the town government told him "No" for
ridiculously short-sighted reasons, basically just because they had the power to do so, but citing concerns that the
expanded locally-owned gas station would damage the small-town charm of the business district. They then changed their
minds back and forth several times, dragging out the process to ridiculous lengths and causing Stelling to lose his
financing offer due to the lenghty delays. By the time the town government finally stopped jerking Stelling around and
gave their final approval to the expansion, Stelling had already given up and had entered into an agreement to sell his
land to Walgreens instead so they could put up a big white corporate box of a drugstore in the middle of downtown Melbourne
Beach. And suddenly the town was embroiled in a legal fight over the character of its central business district as they
scrambled to keep Walgreens out.
That saga finally sputtered to an end earlier this month. Stelling, frustrated with the fight to keep him from selling
his own land to Walgreens, finally decided to go
back to Plan A. He lined up new financing, made sure the town would still allow him to expand his gas station as he
originally wanted to do, and told Walgreens the land was off the market. It's a happy ending for pretty much all involved:
Stelling gets to expand his gas station, and the business district keeps its small-town charm. Except that the town could've
had this exact same ending years ago, minus the hefty legal fees and harsh feelings, if they'd just allowed Stelling to do
what he wanted to do with his own land and property to begin with. Instead, they fell into the arrogant trap of seeing
Stelling as a subject to rule over, rather than seeing him as a citizen to serve.
These two cases are excellent examples of governments that are penny-wise but pound-foolish. We the people are in
charge. We the people elect these officials to serve us, not to look down upon us and serfs and subjects to
be controlled and ruled. And when governments forget this fact, we the people often find surprising ways of fighting
back against their arrogance and idiocy. In South Attleboro, the blind citizen Eileen Wilbur fought back by taking the case
public and embarrassing the city. They'll get their penny, but at a far more costly price. In Melbourne Beach, the town
government denied Stelling's property rights on the grounds that expanding his locally-owned business would somehow destroy
the local flavor of the downtown area, and his frustrated response almost brought about the very scenario they claimed they
were trying to avoid.
We the people are in charge. And woe be upon anyone in government who forgets that simple fact.
|
| | |
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 8:45am
|
|
"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."
- Carl Bard |
|
(Yes, I'm back. Watch for hot updating action later today.)
|
|
November 4th general election round-up
|
| | |
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 1:00pm
|
Bad blogger! No cookie for you.
I feel really, really dumb about this, but I just didn't leave myself with enough time to do full write-ups on the
entire ballot for the general election. I really need to allocate more time to keeping this blog going for the future.
But for now, I at least want to get my election choices out into the public record. It's better than nothing, I suppose.
As I said back in August, if you've taken the time to educate yourself on the candidates and issues, make sure you get
out there and vote! But if you haven't taken the time to educate yourself, stay the hell away from voting booths.
'Kay, thanks.
You can click here for sample ballots that you can print off and
take with you. All you have to do is select your precinct number. If you're not sure what your precinct
number is, it should be on your voter ID card, or you can click here to
find your precinct number. And if you're not sure where to go to vote,
click here for a list of voting locations.
All polls will be open from 7:00am to 7:00pm. If there's a line at your precinct towards the end of the day, just
make sure you get in line before 7:00pm and you'll still be allowed to vote.
Oh, and of course, later tonight you can click these next two links to get results
from the Brevard County election office or
from the state's election office. The first link will only give you totals in
Brevard County, and a lot of the districts being voted on today spill over outside of Brevard, so that's why you'll need
the state link to get the complete picture.
PRESIDENT
Bob Barr (Libertarian)
First time I've voted Libertarian in the Presidential race. I've been registered Libertarian for close to 6 years now,
but I voted for Dubya in '04. I oppose Barack Obama on almost every issue, but I don't fear an Obama presidency nearly as
much as some people do. If this country survived Carter, it can survive Obama. And while McCain beats out Obama, he's just
not that strong a conservative. I like Sarah Palin better, but she's not at the top of the ticket; McCain is. And I have to
vote for the candidate who I agree with the most, and in this race, that's Bob Barr. And no, don't tell me it's a wasted
vote. I'm voting for the candidate in this race who I agree with the most. How is that a wasted vote?
US HOUSE DISTRICT 15
Frank Zilaitis (No Party)
Blythe is too liberal. Lowing is too inexperienced. And Posey is just too connected to the Republican establishment
and would most likely be more of the same, though he'd still be an improvement over Weldon. But Zilaitis, despite his
lack of direct experience, has the legal skills, the drive, and the conservative governing philosophy to serve Brevard
County quite well. He's also the strongest FairTax supporter in the race. Bonus!
STATE SENATE DISTRICT 24
Kendall Moore (D)
Thad Altman has been downright snaky in this campaign and is about as slick as a politician can get. We need to keep
him out of politics before his dirty tactics give the conservative movement an even bigger black eye. Problem is, Moore's
campaign has been only marginally better. If Moore wins, there's a very good chance I'll be voting against him in the
next election anyway. But I just can't bring myself to vote for Altman.
STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 31
John Tobia (R)
I'm not a fan of Tobia... there are serious
questions about his residency, honesty and financial backing. But there are no other opponents in this race except
for a Write-In candidate who probably only ran to keep the Republican primary from being an open primary. Might as well
vote for Tobia, but he starts out on thin ice with me.
SHERIFF
Jack Parker (R)
See my detailed write-up on this race.
PROPERTY APPRAISER
Larry Hughes (D)
See my detailed write-up on this race.
TAX COLLECTOR
Laura Dils (D)
See my detailed write-up on this race.
SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS
Lori Scott (R)
See my detailed write-up on this race.
COUNTY COMMISSION DISTRICT 3
Trudie Infantini (R)
See my detailed write-up on this race.
PALM BAY CITY COUNCIL SEAT 2
William Capote
Capote is the only candidate in this race with a website that actually bothers to explain anything about his stands
on the issues. He's already active and involved in Palm Bay, and should do well on the City Council.
PALM BAY CITY COUNCIL SEAT 3
Bruce Wechsler
Bruce is always on my "must-vote" list when he's on the ballot. He's a tireless champion for smaller government
and increased freedom, and we need more people like him in office.
STATE AMENDMENTS
NO on #1
A Yes vote would take away the ability of the state government to pass any laws at all regarding illegal immigrants
owning property. Who thought this was a good idea? Yikes.
NO on #2
A Yes vote would define marriage in Florida as being between a man and a woman. I think government needs to stay out of
regulating marriages anyway, so this doesn't belong in the Constitution.
NO on #3
A Yes vote would mean that if a homeowner made improvements to their home to either make it stronger against hurricanes
or more energy-efficient, the county Property Appraiser would not be allowed to consider those improvements in determining
the value of that home for tax purposes. Interesting idea... but it doesn't belong in the state's Constitution. Let the
Legislature debate this.
NO on #4
A Yes vote would make any privately-owned land that is set aside as "perpetually conserved land" exempt from property
taxes. I don't like how broadly-worded this is, and again it doesn't belong in the Constitution. Let Tallahassee debate
this idea on the merits and either pass it or reject it as a law, not an amendment.
NO on #6
This is yet another amendment that would change how land is assessed and taxed, this time "working waterfront property."
And again I say, who the hell thinks this belongs in the state Constitution?
YES on #8
Finally, an amendment that actually has something to do with the rules of government instead of somebody's pet issue.
This would open up the possibility for counties to hold an election giving residents the chance to approve a local sales
tax to raise revenue for community college funding. Any such tax, if approved, would have to sunset after 5 years and be
re-approved by the voters. I'm all for local control... I'd probably vote against such a tax, but if some other county's
voters want the option to tax themselves more, who am I to stop them?
BREVARD COUNTY REFERENDUM
YES on CAPIT 2
CAPIT 2: This Time It's Personal. And woe be upon any County Commissioner who files another lawsuit to get this
overturned this time around. The County Commission needs to learn how to live within its means.
SUPREME COURT: RETENTION VOTE
YES for Charles T. Wells
Justice Wells was appointed to the Supreme
Court in 1994 by Gov. Lawton Chiles, and seems to be a conservative judge from what I can find. He issued a dissenting
opinion in the infamous state Supreme Court ruling that kept the recount going in Florida in the 2000 election, and later
the federal Supreme Court agreed with him. He also the only state Supreme Court justice who
dissented from the 2003
decision to overturn Florida's parental notification law for abortions on minors. He seems to understand his role as a
judge is to interpret laws, not write them.
FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS: RETENTION VOTE
YES for Kerry I. Evander
Appointed by Jeb Bush in 2006. Can't find much
more on him.
YES for C. Alan Lawson
Appointed by Jeb Bush in 2006. Can't find much
more on him.
YES for Richard B. Orfinger
Appointed by Jeb Bush in 2006. Orfinger made
a ruling in 2004
in an appeals court case regarding a mentally disabled woman who became pregnant after being raped. Another woman, with
backing from Gov. Jeb Bush, sued to be named the guardian of the unborn child, who was later born. The lawsuit was seen
as an opportunity for anti-abortion groups (I'm anti-abortion, by the way) to establish a legal precedent that would make
it easier to push for unborn children to be treated as living human beings with their own rights. Orfinger ruled
against the lawsuit on appeal, stating that an unborn child would have to be considered a person under Florida law before
a guardian could be appointed for an unborn child. And while it angers me that this is true, it's still true just the
same. I don't like abortion-on-demand, but I don't like these sorts of back-door legal tricks that can open up all sorts
of other tricky, thorny legal problems. The way to fight abortion is to win over hearts and minds, and to get a specific
declaration into the state constitution somehow that specifically and unequivocably grants rights to unborn children. Go
in the front door, not the back door. In this case, Orfinger looked at the law as it's currently written rather than how
he thinks it should be, and that's what good judges do. To do otherwise is to write law from the bench.
YES for William David Palmer
Appointed by Jeb Bush in 2000. Can't find much
more on him.
YES for Thomas D. Sawaya
Appointed by Jeb Bush in 2000. He's the judge
who presided over the murder trial of Aileen Wuornos and
sentenced her to death.
SEBASTIAN INLET DISTRICT COMMISSIONER
Jenny Lawton Seal for District 1
Beth L. Mitchell for District 2
C. Raymond Reed for District 3
These are 3 very odd races according to this recent
Florida Today article. A mysterious group of challengers has sprung up out of nowhere to try to unseat the current
commissioners, and two of the challengers are actually married to each other and yet are running in two different districts.
Two of the other challengers have posted very vague websites that don't make much of a case for why the current commission
should be replaced, let alone why they should be the ones to replace them. In the absence of a compelling argument to kick
the bums out, as it were, I'm letting the incumbents stay in.
BREVARD SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT - GROUP 3
Nancy Marr Stephenson
Stephenson is the incumbent, and I haven't heard of any big
issues or problems with this office lately.
|
|
Property Appraiser: Larry Hughes vs. Jim Ford
|
| | |
Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 1:00pm
|
The race
for Property Appraiser... geez, I hate this one. Normally as I've been doing my candidate write-ups, I've been able to
start off writing about which candidate I support and why I support them. But in this case, my vote really isn't for a
candidate, but rather against one, the shady Republican incumbent Jim Ford to be precise. His challenger Larry Hughes is
not a particularly strong candidate and wasn't even the strongest Democrat in the race... that would be Charlie Sitton, who
Hughes defeated in the primary. But Ford has taken the Property Appraiser's office in the wrong direction and needs to be
ousted. And the only way that will happen is to get Larry Hughes elected and hope and pray that he manages not to screw
things up.
Bill Mick invited both Larry Hughes and Jim Ford to be interviewed for
50 Minutes With
segments for the website. Hughes came in. Ford claimed traffic problems as the reason for missing his segment and declined to reschedule, but
he did make it in sometime later for a live
on-air debate with Hughes on Bill Mick Live. Check them out if you get the chance.
Jim Ford (R)
To hear him talk about it, Jim Ford is the target of a massive and nefarious conspiracy involving disgruntled former
employees and Florida Today working together to rob him of the governmental power he rightfully earned and so richly
deserves. It seems everyone is out to get him and is blowing a couple of minor unintentional errors way out of proportion
for the sole purpose of settling personal grudges with him, and he claims he has done absolutely nothing wrong in his 20
years as the Property Appraiser. But where there's smoke, there's fire. And there's an awful lot of smoke surrounding
the investigation of Ford's office that is being conducted by the state government.
Ford would tell you to ignore that smoke because of Friday's news that the corruption charges against Ford's former
right-hand man Lance Larsen have been thrown out by
the presiding judge, Circuit Judge Charles Holcomb, last Friday. But if you read through the court dispatches from Florida Today
reporter Jeff Schweers from 10/23,
10/27,
10/28
and 10/29,
you'll see that the charges were thrown out simply because the judge made a series of technical rulings that large swaths
of the prosecution's evidence couldn't be shown to the jury, despite the fact that the evidence consisted of computerized
data available in the public record. I'm no lawyer, but that ruling really doesn't make much sense to me. Without that
evidence, the prosecution couldn't move forward with their case against Larsen, and Larsen's attorney made a motion to have
the case tossed out. It's the equivalent of winning a football game because the referee made the wrong call on the final
play and gave you a touchdown that you really didn't score.
It's also important to remember that "innocent until proven guilty" is the standard in a court of law. But you do NOT
have to apply that standard when deciding who to vote for; you get to set your own standard for that. The judge ruled that
the jurors weren't allowed to consider the computer evidence, but that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to either. Also
important to note is that the judge didn't say that any of this evidence was untrue or incorrect -- he simply made a
technical ruling that the jury wasn't allowed to see it. So do not take the judge's ruling to mean that Larsen or Ford have
been exonerated of all wrong-doing, because that's not what the ruling was about at all.
So what exactly has Jim Ford been up to? This Florida Today article from
September 10th gives a pretty good summary of
what led to charges being filed against Ford's man Larsen in the first place. Florida Today also has a copy of the
investigative report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on
Jim Ford, as well as the reports on Lance Larsen for
the charges of official misconduct and
grand theft.
Basically, the FDLE reviewed records from Ford's office and found multiple cases where highly-questionable appraisal breaks
were given to various landowners in Brevard who just happened to be campaign donors or political bigshots who Ford would have
every reason to curry favor with, lowering their tax bills considerably and costing the county $61,000 in tax revenue.
Many of these breaks were signed-off on by Ford himself, who even admits in his campaign literature that these breaks
shouldn't have been given out but calls them innocent mistakes. Even if you take Ford's explanation at face value, it means
that the county lost out on $61,000 in property tax revenue because Ford's office was incompetent. And when you look at the
people who got those breaks (including the parents of State Representative Thad Altman, a fellow Republican), I simply
don't buy that there was nothing nefarious taking place.
The FDLE also found evidence that the appraisers who Ford overruled to grant the tax breaks feared for their jobs if
they spoke out, something that Charlie Sitton could probably
tell you more about. And on September 22nd, Florida Today ran a follow-up story about two employees in Ford's office
who told the FDLE they were pressured by supervisors
to sign false affidavits to try to discredit a whistle-blower named Dana Blickley who had been cooperating with the
FDLE's investigation.
There may not be quite enough evidence to meet the technical requirements of a criminal court of law or to have anyone
thrown in jail, but that's not what this election is about. This election is about whether or not Jim Ford should be
allowed to remain in office as the Property Appraiser. The accusations against Ford are serious and are backed-up quite
well, and his response has mainly consisted of personal attacks and attempts to undermine the credibility of those who
speak up against him, rather than presenting any facts or evidence to back up his own innocence or disprove the facts as
uncovered by the FDLE. That's why I want him out. And the only way to get Jim Ford out is to vote Larry Hughes in.
Larry Hughes (D)
Larry Hughes has had his share of legal problems this year, though nothing related to his performance on the school board
or any accusations of abuse of his power. The main story has been the DUI charge that was filed against him over the
summer. But Hughes maintained his innocence, refusing to take a breathalyzer and holding out for a blood test. The tests
eventually came back showing no alcohol or illegal drugs in his bloodstream, but the prosecutor tried to keep the case
alive and seemed poised to drag it out as long as possible. So Hughes
pleaded no-contest to a reduced charge of reckless
driving and agreed to take a couple of state-mandated safety classes to side-step six months of probation.
But back to Hughes refusing to take a breathalyzer... in Florida, refusing to submit to a breathalyzer test results in
an automatic suspension of your driver's license. You agree to that rule when you sign for a license. So Hughes's license
was automatically suspended. Fast-forward to August. When Tropical Storm Fay was bearing down on Brevard, Hughes got
popped for driving on that suspended license. Hughes explained that he was only driving because he needed to buy storm
supplies. (Ever heard of a taxi, Larry?) He initially planned to plead guilty to that charge, but now the court hearing on
the suspended license charge has been delayed
until after Election Day. And in his 50 Minutes With interview with Bill Mick, Hughes said that with the DUI charge
gone and the blood test showing no alcohol in his system, he and his lawyer are now challenging the validity of the
license suspension itself, which in turn would negate the charge of driving with a suspended license. And that sounds like
a reasonable argument to me.
Now for the issues... Larry Hughes is unsurprisingly running on a platform of cleaning up the Property Appraiser's
office and running it with more transparency and accountability. He has been unwavering in his criticism of Jim Ford and
has made that criticism the center of his campaign.
During the Democratic primary race, I was very critical
of Hughes for his apparent lack of knowledge about the duties of the office and for his bizarre proposal to increase the
assessments on marijuana grow-houses. I wasn't the only one to express such concerns, and it appears that Hughes took
those criticisms to heart even after winning the primary. The Larry Hughes I've heard more recently sounds far more
knowledgable than the Larry Hughes I heard back in the primary race, so he's clearly been doing his homework on the
Property Appraiser's office. He now seems far more familiar with the duties of the job.
That's not to say I'm comfortable with putting Hughes in this job; I'm not. I still have concerns about his judgement,
and just because he's giving better interviews now doesn't mean he's ready to take on the complicated task of setting
appraisal values for every home in Brevard County. But he's the only alternative to Jim Ford in this race. He's the guy I
have to work with, and Hughes has at least convinced me that he won't be a disaster in this office. I have a feeling I'll
be voting against Hughes four years from now to replace him with a better-qualified person, but in this race against Jim
Ford, Larry Hughes gets my vote.
|
|
Tax Collector: Laura Dils vs. Lisa Cullen
|
| | |
Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 10:15am
|
With Rod Northcutt retiring from his post as Tax Collector after running the office since 1992, the
Tax Collector's race
is particularly important this year. The choice is between a long-time office insider who knows the job well but played a
pivotal role in the unionization of the employees, and a private-sector business administrator with plenty of management
skills but no experience working in a government office. It's an interesting race, and if you still have time you should
check out the 50 Minutes With
segments Bill Mick recorded with each candidate, along with the joint debate. But here's what I think.
Laura Dils (D)
I was torn on this race for the longest time, but I think I've finally decided to come down on the side of Laura Dils, the
Democrat in this race. Dils has the endorsement of Rod Northcutt, though that probably has more to do with the fact that
Dils and Northcutt are both Democrats, but it is worth considering. She brings an outsider's mentality to the job, along
with years of business administration experience and a stint supervising an office of over 1,000 employees. Though she's
never worked in the Tax Collector's office, I felt comfortable with her answers to Bill Mick and with how she held up in
the debate with her opponent, Lisa Cullen, and I don't think she'll find the job nearly as difficult as Cullen suggested
she would.
Dils promised to try to run the office more like a business and to look for areas to save money on the budget. Back in
the primaries she mis-spoke and told Bill Mick she would look at closing down one or two branch offices to save money, a
statement I picked up on and criticized here on my website. She later reached out to me in a series of e-mails to clarify
her position, and she also corrected this in her 50 Minutes With segment with Bill Mick, and I'm satisfied that she
did indeed mis-speak. What she intends to do is to find ways to share office space with other county agencies, which
would probably include relocating several offices but could save the county money, so I can get behind that. She also
stressed that the Tax Collector's website needs more improvement and pledged to make it happen.
The total lack of any experience working in a government office does concern me about Laura Dils, but she's not exactly
a dumb lady. I think she's capable of learning as she goes, and she seems to have a good relationship with Rod Northcutt
and should be able to go to him for advice as she settles in at the job. I feel quite comfortable with voting for Laura
Dils.
Lisa Cullen (R)
Lisa Cullen has a wealth of experience working on both the Brevard and Orange County Tax Collector's office stretching back
to 1987, so she clearly knows what she's doing. I have no doubt that Lisa Cullen is up to the task of running the office,
which is why I was glad she defeated Jackie Colon in the Republican primary. Like Dils, Cullen has some great ideas for
cutting the office's expenses and was able to go into a bit more specificity thanks to her inside knowledge. She also has
plans to improve the speed with which payments are processed by the Tax Collector.
But the union issue is very troubling for me.
A state agency called the Public Employees Relations Commission has
issued
a report on the events in 2006 that led to the unionization of the Tax Collector's employees in response to Rod
Northcutt's allegation that Lisa Cullen actively participated in organizing the union. Cullen was a manager at the time,
and state law forbids government employees in management positions from participating in the organization of a union
because it creates a conflict of interest. Such managers are tasked with keeping employee expenses low, but unions are
usually formed to increase employee wages and benefits, so organizing a union would put a manager at odds with their job
duties. While the commission eventually overturned Northcutt's overall complaint, the findings-of-fact in the report did
show that Cullen was very actively involved in the initial formation of the union, and only backed off later once people
began to question the propriety of her involvement. The report is only 19 pages long and there's isn't much written on
each page, so read through it if you get the chance.
On the question of whether Cullen broke the law, I'm not really all that concerned to be honest. It sounds to me like it
was a technical violation that Cullen wasn't initially aware of, and I could easily see someone not being aware of this law.
What concerns me more is that Cullen was involved in forming the union at all. I don't like unions. Period. I think there
was a time in this country when unions were needed to preserve the health and safety of laborers, but today's unions have
gone far beyond that role and often serve to put a stranglehold on capitalism.
In this case, there were no health or safety concerns at play in the Tax Collector's office. This union was formed to
resolve perceived pay inequities within the office -- a pay dispute. And the way to handle a pay dispute is to try to talk
to your manager and renegotiate your pay. If management refuses, it means one of two things. One is that you should leave the job
and find another one where management understands your worth and pays you accordingly, because if you truly do deserve that
raise then you should have no trouble finding a better job for yourself out there. The other is that you need to get over
yourself because you don't really deserve the pay you're asking for, and you'll find that out in a hurry when you quit and
can't find a new job that will pay you what you think you're worth either. Regardless, it's something that should be
handled one-on-one with the employee and the manager. Running off and forming a union is a bad move, because sooner or
later that union is going to start going overboard and start demanding exorbitant pay and benefits -- at the expense of you
and me, since this is a government office paid for with our tax dollars. Their only concern will be lining their own
wallets, and they won't give a damn about you and me or how well the office is run.
Lisa Cullen says she wants to save us all money by running the Tax Collector's office more efficiently. That's why I'm
mystified that she would open the door to a unionized office and jeopardize the efficiency of the office. It makes me
question her judgement, and it's cost her my support in this race.
Archive: October 2008 »
|
|
|
|

vince.young@gmail.com
My name is Vince Young, and I am NOT a football player. I'm a young resident of Palm Bay, the largest city along the
Space Coast in Florida, and I'm a local radio talk-show host on AM-1300 WMEL in Cocoa, a bit north of Palm Bay. This site
serves as a companion to my radio show as we discuss news and events in Brevard County, local politics, and state and
national news, as well as whatever random stuff catches my fancy. To learn more, click here.
2009 Schedule
| 9/5 - vs. Nevada TBA on NBC |
| 9/12 - at Michigan (sucks) TBA on TBA |
| 9/19 - vs. Michigan State TBA on NBC |
| 9/26 - at Purdue TBA on TBA |
| 10/3 - vs. Washington TBA on NBC |
| 10/17 - vs. $outhern Cal TBA on NBC |
| 10/24 - vs. Boston College TBA on NBC |
| 10/31 - vs. Washington State (at San Antonio, TX) TBA on NBC |
| 11/7 - vs. Navy TBA on NBC |
| 11/14 - at Pittsburgh TBA on TBA |
| 11/21 - vs. Connecticut TBA on NBC |
| 11/28 - at Stanford TBA on TBA |
|
|