Stuart, 3M, foul water; put Trump in brig? Biden deity? Dissing docs; DeSantis | Letters

No hero in Stuart legal victory over water contaminated by 3M product

Congratulations to the city of Stuart for winning the lawsuit against 3M. But forgive me if I don’t feel like celebrating.

When David fought Goliath, it was a fight for his life; if he did not defeat the giant, he would have been brutally killed. He knew the consequences, yet chose to take the risk. Had the story ended differently, we would be using another analogy for an underdog.

I am unsure that the city’s battle with 3M deserves the comparison. A true underdog has a considerable disadvantage, but still enters the contest. To compare to David’s story, losing something significant would have to be on the line. Also, when is a government considered an underdog?

The city’s case was strong. Chemicals used in the fire suppression foam did contain polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The instructions suggested using expired materials for training without mentioning potential contamination. There was not much liability on the city for using the foam. But what about after?

My family drank the contaminated water without warning. My children bathed in it. At that point, I only knew that Stuart received awards for the water, and we were told it was safe. By chance, I heard about the levels of PFAS discovered in our wells, and I immediately purchased a filtration system. The city had already moved to curtail the contamination, but I wasn’t about to put my trust in anything else.

Why did the city not advertise the hazard to the public? Why wasn’t everyone given the opportunity to safeguard themselves against possible harm? Were doctors and hospitals notified so they could diagnose possible effects? How long were we exposed to the problem before measures were taken?

I am grateful to the city for standing up for us and fighting for justice. Sorry, I don’t recognize a hero in this story.

Nick Gulotta, Stuart

David vs. Goliath: Stuart's desire for untainted water supply put city at odds with 3M in national lawsuit

Save gardeners' backs with seaweed brigade

Recent front-page news showed us photos of seaweed debris at ocean beaches.

“Make hay when the sun shines.” Or better yet, why not “make lemonade from fallen lemons?” By that I mean, do what is done in other parts of the country.

When seaweed remains on sandy beaches, a cadre of volunteers, including children from sixth grade through high school and adults of any age, could bring rakes to the beach.

In the village in which I resided for 20 years, when seaweed was out of control, it would be raked and baled by the sanitation department. Since many residents had flower and/or vegetable gardens, they could request a bale or two to place around their vegetable plants, in particular. This reduced weed growth in the garden, not to mention the aching backs of many gardeners.

This could be a weekly or monthly occurrence or called to order when the amount of seaweed necessitates it. Schools could assign hours spent to community service and credit the students.

Remember: “A stitch in time saves nine.”

And, of course the most popular of all proverbs: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Audrey Taggart, Hobe Sound

Treasure Coast needs commercial property transformation

Given residential real estate’s current lull, it’s time for Florida zoning and land-use officials to reconsider approving more sorely needed micro-industrial, warehouse and retail plaza redevelopments and repurposing instead.

Commercial real estate is where our regional entrepreneurs, workforces and customers gather to shop, transact, manufacture, seek financial, legal or medical attention, dine and socialize, and earn their living.

Whilst hordes of small, medium and large business owners continue migrating southward, even more are relocating northward and eastward to escape overpriced, hurricane-flooded and dangerously crumbling “south-South Florida” commercial zones.

One problem: From Jupiter to Stuart, Jensen Beach to Port St. Lucie, and especially from Fort Pierce to Vero Beach, there are crippling shortages of Class-A industrial space that traditional and high-tech businesses desperately need to thrive and hire here.

One solution: Outdated malls and other obsolete buildings are being converted architecturally into more innovative, industrial and income-producing properties, post-COVID.

This shortage of newly functional commercial space throughout the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches is also strangling local incomes, jobs, tax revenues –– and residential home sales.

In my experience, the four challenges stifling economic prosperity here are: a) impossibly sluggish city-county commercial permitting, b) shortages of available industrial architectural, engineering and construction labor, c) retaliatory property insurance price-gouging statewide, andd) Florida’s unique imbalance of out-of-state vs. local commercial real estate owners and investors.

Additionally, the amount of dilapidated Florida shopping, dining and service business plazas in need of modern renovations and façade improvements is equally staggering.

Since local retail, restaurant, hotel, medical, office and warehouse space is where the bulk of Florida-based jobs, property taxes and microeconomics derive, it’s time for local leaders, investors, developers and zoning officials to focus more on greenlighting badly needed commercial property transformations instead.

Baron Christopher Hanson is an "off-market commercial property specialist" from Port St. Lucie

Trump and Biden: Worshiping a false prophet can go both ways

I have to say, until the end, I completely agreed with Cray Little’s recent letter, “Turn away from religion, toward politics, creates false deities.”

He quoted Shadi Hamid and Abraham Kuyper, who both claim that “religious faith has declined” and “ideological intensity has risen,” something that’s hard to dispute. The writers claim that, as humans, a substitute must be found if “religion fails to provide the connective tissue between humans and the divine.”

Sadly, as he later testifies, Mr. Little seems to believe such “ideological intensity" applies only to Republicans. He claims that many of Donald Trump’s followers regard the former president as a “nationalist savior” and refers to his “boisterous rallies” as resembling a “tent revival” being more focused on “blood and soil than on the son of God.”

He continues by saying that some “MAGA supporters” idolize a false prophet and are less in “need of God.”

Oh, my. His confirmation bias got the best of him, and he was either unable or unwilling to deviate from the left’s playbook of name-calling and shaming, regardless of what he quoted in the beginning of his letter.

Perhaps being conditioned to believe only the worst in a large number of the population, he never stopped to consider that most Trump supporters just wanted something different, something outside the Washington swamp. Something other than the Clintons. Or the Bush family, for that matter.

A  biased media that has lost all credibility has helped demonize Trump through innuendo and lies for years. The current president, desperate to maintain power, is furthering this destructive mission, calling Trump’s supporters white supremacists and super-ultra MAGA.

Joe Biden “preached” in his “sermons” to the American people before his election that he would bring people together, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. Who’s really worshiping a false prophet?

Patricia Perrone, Stuart

'Surprise billing' practices call for Florida representative intervention

Imagine you use a medical provider for several different services and you receive a bill from that provider for a specific service rendered on a specific day.

Imagine you pay it and file a copy, attaching the statement, amount paid and check number. Next, imagine you later get another bill showing you have a balance for the same service you just paid. Would you pay it? Would you search your records trying to figure out why you owe a balance when you have a copy of the bill, the receipt and canceled check you used to pay it?

After hours of trying to figure it out, you contact the provider’s billing service and are told the payment you made was not applied to the date and service for which you were billed, but was applied to different date and service for which you have not yet been billed.

Imagine this was the practice of every provider you use. Would you be able to keep track of all your bills and payments? Might you inadvertently overpay providers because their billing was so confusing?

Imagine you are a senior citizen who lacks the knowhow to straighten it out.

That is the state of medical billing practices in Florida. What if I told you these practices were legal?

Imagine you receive a bill with different CPT codes listed and pay the bill in full only to learn the amount you paid was split among other service dates and CPT codes. Would you think that this is how ethical bookkeeping is supposed to work?

To me, this is another form of “surprise billing.”

It is our state representatives’ job to pass regulations that protect the consumer from such practices. I’m awaiting a response from them, but expect nothing will be done.

Louise Jones, Vero Beach

Florida Republicans help DeSantis bill taxpayers for losing culture war lawsuits

Thank you for covering the latest news on the antics of our governor. One does not have to be a rocket scientist or judicial scholar to know that his ideas about governing are all too often unconstitutional.

His trickster notions are more geared to an autocracy or dictatorship; certainly not to a democratic republic such as our nation or to the state of Florida.

He has been able to have these ridiculous laws/policies passed in our state because he owns a Republican majority here. This fact just shows the power of a majority whose ideas are skewed to loyalty to a political party rather than concern for the residents of their districts.

Laws are passed, lawsuits are filed and then we residents get to pay the costs incurred for the governor's defense. His actions constitute an obscene misuse of the power of governance. He should have enough "elite" degrees to know that his actions are unconstitutional, but he has no regard for the rules and regulations of our country or our state; his only concern is his advancement on the national political scene.

Add these latest tricks to the moving of immigrants in other states to more progressive areas while, once again, using taxpayer dollars to pay for these escapades.

Hateful: Check.

Manipulative: Check.

Mean-spirited: Check.

Ultimately unconstitutional: Check.

What a guy. Great job, Florida Republicans!

Sharon Garland, Hobe Sound

Retired chief petty officer: No excuse to ever misuse classified documents

Donald Trump was correct. Compared to his legal entanglements, Hunter Biden's legal problem is a traffic ticket and the Department of Justice seems to be treating them both at an appropriate level.

I spent 20 years in the military and had a number of tours of duty needing clearance for classified access. If I had taken any of it out of the secure area, I would still be in Leavenworth Prison.

Trump was no more authorized to remove classified material than I would have been just because he was in the Oval Office.

Elmer C. Meiser Jr., retired Navy chief petty officer, Sebastian

Families of disabled children need help from DeSantis

Gov. Ron DeSantis was quoted recently: “My wife and I just believe that kids should be able to go to school, watch cartoons, just be kids, without having some agenda shoved down their throats. So we take that very seriously, and we’ve done an awful lot to be able to support parents.”

But not parents of disabled children?

DeSantis wasn’t in office in 2011, when those parents had to appeal to the federal government because the state of Florida was removing children from their homes and putting them with old people in nursing homes. The feds found nearly 200 children with disabilities unnecessarily institutionalized in nursing facilities, and they have been helping the parents to keep their children at home for more than 10 years now.

So maybe DeSantis and the Moms for Liberty just don’t know that 140 Florida children are still in nursing homes?

Anne Swerlick wrote in the Tampa Bay Times: “The Sunshine State receives a 61% federal match rate for state dollars spent on Medicaid. Expansion would enable Florida to access a 90% match rate under the Affordable Care Act, meaning that $9 in federal money would match every $1 the state invests in Medicaid. Every year, nearly $4 billion in new federal money would return to Florida.”

Jan Brewer, former governor of Arizona, accepted Affordable Care Act money 10 years ago, because, she said: ”It’s pro-life, it's saving lives, it is creating jobs, it is saving hospitals.”

Would it give Florida enough money to pay for home care and community services for disabled children?

George Washington said our unity is our strength, and warned about the dangers of political parties. The parents of disabled children need DeSantis’ help, please.

Helen Frigo, Jensen Beach

Affirmative action ruling stain on America

As I try and process the Supreme Court decision gutting affirmative action for colleges and universities, except for military colleges, I am reminded of the bright students in my classroom whose opportunities were limited only by the color of their skin, an admonition my father had given me when he noted I had advantages because I was white.

It was a reality I refused to accept until teaching made it impossible to deny.

It should be noted military colleges are exempted from this ruling because, to paraphrase Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, it is acceptable to prepare Black and other minorities for success in the bunker, but not in the board room. As a teacher, I can testify America is denying itself bright minds for the forward growth of democracy when this ruling is implemented.

It also begs the question as to why military colleges are exempt. With deepest gratitude to those who wear the uniform and protect my freedom, so do teachers, scientists, lawyers, artists and writers. Why exempt one group and not others? I don't like the answer I come up with.

No person is expendable based only on the color of their skin. It is a dark day in America when the highest court in the land does not take the opportunity to reaffirm that all Americans are created equal with equal opportunity to follow their dreams and goals.

Joan Fox, Vero Beach

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Stuart, 3M, water; growth; Trump in brig? Biden deity? DeSantis Law