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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!
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.
Here's what I talked about on Monday night on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL:
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: 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 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:
Other stories: Talk to you tonight on AM-1300 WMEL!
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:
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!
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:
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!
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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!
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!
(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. 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!
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
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...
Following up on Courtney Roberts
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!
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!
No show on Wednesday night
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
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.
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!
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"...
Other stories:
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'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!
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:
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!
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:
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
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
Other stories
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!
No radio show for Saturday 3/21
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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: (EDIT: 3/8/2009 at 9:45am - Here's a few more stories I mentioned on the show last night.)
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...
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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:
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:
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!
(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.
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
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
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!
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
Other stories
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. :)
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
Obama's stimulus package
Other stories:
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! :)
Three great examples: 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.)
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.
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.
(Yes, I'm back. Watch for hot updating action later today.)
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
US HOUSE DISTRICT 15
STATE SENATE DISTRICT 24
STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 31
SHERIFF
PROPERTY APPRAISER
TAX COLLECTOR
SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS
COUNTY COMMISSION DISTRICT 3
PALM BAY CITY COUNCIL SEAT 2
PALM BAY CITY COUNCIL SEAT 3
STATE AMENDMENTS
NO on #2
NO on #3
NO on #4
NO on #6
YES on #8
BREVARD COUNTY REFERENDUM
SUPREME COURT: RETENTION VOTE
FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS: RETENTION VOTE
YES for C. Alan Lawson
YES for Richard B. Orfinger
YES for William David Palmer
YES for Thomas D. Sawaya
SEBASTIAN INLET DISTRICT COMMISSIONER
BREVARD SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT - GROUP 3
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Cocoa Beach City Commission approves red
light cameras
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.
Richard DiPatri wants to raise your taxes!
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.
Tea parties!
Courtney Roberts: still buried in red tape
Jim Ford in the news. Again.
Crime in Cocoa: what's being done about it?
Go learn CPR. Don't wait.
A
whole new County Commission
Gun paranoia strikes again
Okay, maybe I'm just missing something here.
Making Brevard's animal shelters "no-kill"
As has been
So, have you heard about the city of Cocoa and
their 
Just when you think government can't get any more
arrogant...
Bad blogger! No cookie for you.
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