Letters to the Editor: Jan. 19, 2022
A ban on panhandling must be enforced cautiously
The Jan. 12 issue of the Newsweekly gives headline coverage to a new police “known trespassers” unit, and also discusses the city’s new ordinance described as a “ban on panhandling.”
The new police unit needs to proceed cautiously in enforcing the ban, since in Reed vs. Town of Gilbert the Supreme Court held that in most instances, panhandling in public spaces is a constitutionally protected form of free speech.
Thomas Glynn, Vero Beach
Development price should reflect real economic and environmental costs
The boom and bust real estate cycles create economic, budgetary and political uncertainty and conflicts.
Every parcel of land in the city and county has an assigned array of uses and densities. They also have individual locational and environmental characteristics. The current process allows density increase to be given out as requested for some negotiated and often misunderstood benefit, while environmental and recreational properties are taken without or with publicly paid compensation. Implementing a transfer of property rights strategy could be used to correct these imbalances.
The county and city process for planned unit developments could be changed to include market-based policies that make the price of development reflect their real environmental and economic cost as well as protect valuable environmental, agriculture and recreational lands. For property owners asking to increase densities and intensities, the transfer of development rights could be used to protect our most valuable lands, both environmental and societal, at no cost to the public and still protect long-established property rights.
This has previously been done at the state and regional level. The Adam’s Ranch in St. Lucie County has a conservation easement but is still used by the family for its agricultural business. In addition to the easement price, the family may have gotten a very beneficial tax deduction, the public got a reduced price to preserve valuable environmental land, and if the transferred property rights were sold to a developer there would have been no cost to the public.
This is already being used on larger properties such as Pineland Prairie, which is being developed by Kiplinger in Martin County, whereby lands are being set aside for agriculture, preservation, institutional, commercial and residential uses. In Stuart, the smaller Avonlea PUD designated over 40% of the property as preserve.
Frank Wacha, Stuart
The Constitution gives the states authority to hold elections
The sanctity of the election process is essential for a functioning democracy. Citizens need confidence that their vote counts as much as every other citizen's vote. To guarantee this, government must ensure that each vote is genuine and timely. To be genuine, it must be cast voluntarily without duress and by an eligible individual. To be timely, it must be cast during a stated period prior to or on the election day but before a preset deadline.
The Constitution gives the states the duty to conduct elections and set voting rules. Maine may need different rules than Arizona does.
In most states to be eligible to vote, one must register and prove citizenship and age prior to an election to be placed on the voter roll. At the polling place, one typically shows a picture ID which is matched up with the voter roll. Some disagree whether a voter needs to show identification. One would think that would be necessary to prove who he/she is. Those arguing against IDs make one wonder what their ulterior motive is. One should need an ID to register in the first place.
Anyone seeking an absentee ballot has to show an ID to qualify. When ballots arrive, there is a signature comparison. There are those who advocate mailing ballots to all voters whether they request one or not. This can be confusing to those who vote in person at the polls. An honest voter could accidentally vote twice. Or a dishonest group could take advantage of the system given the extra ballots issued and with changes in voter rolls. Likewise, vote-harvesting and drop-off boxes are invitations for voter mischief.
Republican and Democrats should agree that votes need to be fair and honest. This is the United States — not Cuba or Venezuela.
Tom Miller, Vero Beach
Invasion of the Capitol was far worse than just a ‘sideshow’
Fred Fiske’s Jan. 12 commentary asks, “Why not compare Jan 6, Black Lives Matter, Vietnam protests? He ends his discussion with his own conclusion that "The Capitol invasion was a disturbing, costly sideshow. It never posed a threat to democracy, any more than Black Lives Matter protests — or the Vietnam demonstrations of my youth."
Ironically, on the day after Fiske's commentary appeared, Stewart Rhodes, head of the Oath Keepers and a primary organizer of the events of Jan. 6, was arrested along with 10 other individuals. All were charged with seditious conspiracy, a rarely used but extremely serious statute which carries much stiffer penalties than we are used to seeing in the case of conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
Rhodes's group went well beyond "conduct or speech inciting … .” Theirs was armed conduct with assorted weapons on their persons and also a large cache of firearms and ammunition in the custody of a "Quick Reaction Force" stationed nearby in a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Virginia. The facts brought out when the charges were announced raise the discussion considerably.
The Oath Keepers as well as the Proud Boys were hell-bent not on just rebelling against our government but on destroying it.
Comparing Jan. 6, Black Lives Matter, and the Vietnam protests would be like trying to compare fire and water.
Elizabeth Kay Gibson, Hutchinson Island
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Letters to the Editor: Jan. 19, 2022
