Callers comment on the sole finalist to be UF president, library security and more
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• Let’s be honest: Religious schools are less diverse than public schools or state universities are. Let’s also be truthful: Being the president of a very small college is in no way comparable to leading a major statewide/national institution. So, how did the University of Florida end up choosing a new president whose educational leadership background is being the head of a small Lutheran college half the size of Buchholz High School?
• Whatever happened to the Florida Sunshine Law? When it comes to the recent selection of the president of the University of Florida, we are totally kept in the dark. It looks very shady to me.
• My neighborhood public library is the Alachua County Headquarters Library in downtown Gainesville. I’ve inquired on two separate times, “Is there a security guard? Where is the security guard?” because I haven’t seen one. Usually, a guard is present while I’m working there, walking through the adult reading room, or at the circulation area or other places throughout the library. When I asked the library staff member, her response was, “Is there a problem? Do you need a guard? I can call a guard.” Showing a security presence helps keep order. No library staff member is trained to evaluate/handle security problems.
• The public is being fooled by the Wild Spaces, Public Places, road repair, fire station and affordable housing 1% tax on the ballot. The way this is worded is misleading. Wild Spaces, Public Places will be in effect until 2024. The rest is an adage of tax for items that should already be in the county budget.
• The Sun interviewed state Rep. Clemons, who said he disliked some of the bigoted culture-war polices advanced by other Republicans. In spite of that claim, he voted in favor of every ultra-MAGA bill during his legislative tenure. Other GOP candidates facing Alachua County voters have tossed out a few hints of MAGA ideology, but not one has disavowed the 2020 election big lie or the MAGA commitment to white supremacy. Even for local elective offices, voters need to know about candidate honesty and integrity. MAGA ideology supports neither of those.
• The League of Women Voters published an excellent voters guide in Sunday’s paper. Very helpful — except where they asked questions of the federal and state-level candidates. Not a single Republican answered a single question. All the Democrats answered every question. What am I to make of this? The Republicans don’t have a platform? Or, they want to keep us in the dark?
• I encourage my fellow Americans to vote for policy issues, not social issues, in the upcoming election. The economy, crime, immigration and education should be our main concerns. They affect all Americans.
• A letter to the editor in Sunday’s Sun wrote that President Biden “in the dead of night brought airplanes full of illegal immigrants to our cities in Florida.” If this is true, I would like for her to explain to me why our governor used my taxpayer money to send planes to Texas to remove legal asylum seekers and fly them to Martha’s Vineyard. If we actually had all these illegal immigrants dumped on our soil by Biden, why didn’t the governor use this money to take these people out of Florida and move them to Martha’s Vineyard? Logic missing.
• I retired in 2002, and two things were on my mind, which was, one, inflation and the cost of medical insurance. Everything was going well for quite a few years, until we got the Obamacare, which tripled my insurance from like $800 to over $2,000. So, I dealt with that and, a couple years later, I got hit with Medicare, which was great, but I’m almost paying right now as much as I used to before Obamacare came in. And now the other issue on hand is inflation. It had been under control, even under Obama and Trump, and now we’re at 8.3% ... My money’s running out.
• We taped and then watched the last hearings of the Jan. 6 committee. I commend all of the members for the tremendous amount of work they did and for their courage.
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Calls on Ben Sasse's selection as UF president, library security, more
