Being Chintzy In Hard Times

All but one of the Monroe County School Board members has refused to give up $2, 946 of their salary for the sake of Monroe County students. The pay cut would have them still making $26,519 plus having all their official travel up to $10,000 reimbursed. Considering that the Board eliminated an assistant principal position at Marathon High School, the refusal by the Board to share in the belt tightening required by the state budget, seems chintzy.

In some states, school board members don't get paid a pittance of what Monroe County Board members do. One has to believe that there are a lot of folks out there who would gladly serve on the Board for a lot less than these Board members are earning.

Their stinginess when it comes to cutting their own salaries makes us wonder. Do they really care about the kids?

The Veto Pen

We're happy to see the report that Governor Crist vetoed the $1.3 million for street beautification for tourism for Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale; the $840,000 for Exponica International, a three-day Latin America cultural and trade festival in Miami; and the $900,000 for a gospel music museum planned in Broward County for which the pork bubbas in Tallahassee were going to spend our tax dollars. We had blogged recently about such excesses.

While we have some reservations on his vetoes of tuition hikes, we do agree with the governor that now is not the time to burden families and students with those hikes. We know also that there is a good deal of waste in higher education and therefore some ways for the institutions affected to ameliorate the effects of the loss of a tuition hike. Moreover, we don't think a 5% tuition hike can be called "modest" as the State University Chancellor would have us believe.

As for the Florida Board of Governors' threat to mount a legal challenge to the veto, our view is save your money. It will cost more than the rise in tuition, and, win or lose, you will lose in the end. Remember, politicians, like elephants, have a long memory. Politicians don't get mad, they just get even. And the governor is, above all else, still a politician.

What Is Plan B ?

The Monroe County School Board has announced that it is looking for money to replace the four school resource officers the Sheriff has told them he may have to cut from his budget. The School Board and the superintendent have met with a representative of the Sheriff's Office.

But just what is the School Board's plan? To say we are looking for more money, we are lobbying Islamorada or Marathon officials, or we'll have to talk to the municipalities are not plans. What is it besides look for more money and talk to the municipalities that the Board is going to do? Will it cut other services to meet the shortfall in funds? Will it cut administrators? Will it do without the officers? Will it seek private funds? Will it ask businesses to help? What, exactly, is the School Board going to do? A plan would be good and now would be a good time to tell the public what it is.

The way the School Board is proceeding makes us (and perhaps others in the public) think there may be no Plan B.

Ignoring Education and Obesity

Don't you just love the Florida legislature? The fat cats there can refuse to increase the amount of money for teacher merit pay; refuse to provide 400 more reading coaches for Florida schools; and refuse money for obesity prevention.

However, when it comes to their own pork, they can provide $100,000 for a shrimp processing plant in Nassau County; $840,000 for a three-day Exponica International cultural and trade festival in Tamiami Park in Miami so the sponsoring organization can get out of debt and promote the event; $725,000 for a new YMCA in Miami; $100,000 for a new trolley depot in Coral Gables; and a cool $1,300,000 to improve Las Olas Boulevard (which runs down to the beach) in Fort Lauderdale to make it more attractive for tourists.

Of course, there are also other items, like $1,500,000 to convert a canal on the campus of Florida Institute of Technology in Melbournne into a rowing training center. What do you suppose they'll do with the alligators? There's also a plan to give $50,000 to an organization hosting an annual World Orchid Conference in Miami; as well as $800,00 for for new synthetic football fields in Miami. Whatever happened to grass?

The bottom line, if the bubbas in the legislature have their way, Florida kids will be too fat to learn row, assuming the alligators don't get them; and they'll be able to play on Astro Turf. But they'll be dumb as a stump and unable to read well enough to get that job in the shrimp processing factory in Nassau County, thanks to the departure of good teachers for better pay elsewhere. That's the future for the new bubbas. Along their future path, there will have been $50,000 for orchids, as well as money for tourism beautification and cultural trade fairs. What a life!

Cutting The School Resource Officers

What we don't understand about the announced potential cuts of four school resource officers by Sheriff Rick Roth's office is where the School District Administration was when all of this was happening. We don't believe for a Conch minute that the School District was unaware of the potential for cuts. The School District has a liaison with the Sheriff's Office. It is reasonable to assume the School Superintendent knew what was going on. If school officials were co concerned about the potential cuts why weren't they revving up the parents before now?

We wonder whether this situation is not another one of those forget-about-it-until-it-happens situations that has continued to plague this school district's operation. Maybe the School Superintendent is confident that the positions will in fact not be cut or will be restored in the end. We don't know.

What we do know is that the Sheriff's Office doesn't just willy-nilly make cuts. Position cuts are a matter of the tough choices that have to be made among scarce resources. Does one increase this response team or that response team? Does one devote more resources to the schools or to the road? Does one put more resources into crime prevention or to apprehension? Ideally, the Sheriff's Office would like to have the resources to put more of them toward every one of these activities. But the resources just aren't there. So the Office has to make some hard choices about where to put the resources it does have. At the end of the day, it all comes down to money.

The County Commission or the School District (or both) could allocate more money for the school resource officers. Of course, it is still the Sheriff's call whether to assign the officers to that duty, but there is no reason to believe the Sheriff would not do so. Alternatively, the Sheriff could "find" additional money or back away from the potential cuts. However, that seems unlikely at this point in time.

Now if the Sheriff is about to fight with the County Commission over his budget, it is a well known budgetary strategy to cut cows that seem sacred to politicians to increase the likelihood that money for those cows will be added to the budget without reductions being made to other priority items. Do school resource officers fall within this category of sacred cows? Probably not, but the announced potential for cuts may generate enough calls to Commissioners and School District politicians to save some of the resource officer positions or give the sheriff some budgetary wiggle room.

The potential cuts may have one salutary effect. They may force the School District to focus more closely on its own goals and priorities and develop back up plans for situations like the potential loss of the four resource officers. If the School District has a Plan B the District has not announced it. That is not surprising since to do so might lessen the chances of insuring the survival of the resource officer positions. What worries us is that there may be no Plan B on the drawing board.

Bibles On The Bike Path

Distributing Bibles on school property could be dangerous, according to the State Attorney's Office spokesperson, Matt Helmerich, in commenting upon a lawsuit filed in Key West Federal Court against the Monroe County Sheriff's office and the State Attorney's office. The suit was filed after two persons (Gideons members) were arrested while distributing Bibles on a bike path near a school. The Gideons are challenging a Florida law that purportedly prohibits persons who do not have "legitimate business" (whatever that means) from loitering within 500 feet of a school.

"If we let anyone with a stack of Bibles on school property, that would be tantamount to giving a license to sexual predators," Helmerich reportedly told The Citizen, while, according to The Citizen, "emphasizing that he was not suggesting Gideons members are sexual predators."

He told The Citizen, "The arrest was not based upon a freedom of speech issue, it was based on protecting our children. The idea that we are arresting them or charging them because they are handing out Bibles is a spurious claim."

Really? Let us understand this, Mr. Helmerich. You are not claiming the two who were arrested are sexual predators, so they were not arrested for that. You apparently admit they all they were doing is handing out Bibles. What exactly were they doing that was not "legitimate" if they were only handing out Bibles?

Oh, we get it, you really just want to "protect" bike path users. some of whom may happen to be kids, but some of whom may also be adults, from that dangerous stuff in the Bible, is that it?

No?

So then, is it that (when you seem to have no good arguments left) you think it's O.K. to inferentially trash these defendants by evoking the dangerous, fearful, what-if-they-were-but-we're-not-saying-they-are "sexual predator" words? That way no one might really think carefully about what you have said, and might accept your argument that passing out Bibles on the bike path within 500 feet of a school constitutes "loitering" and is not "legitimate."

Well, guess what? We have thought about what you apparently have said, and we think it's in the running for our "Dumbest Statement of the Year Award."