What's the plan for the old Terwilliger school? Callers comment on this and other issues
What's on your mind? Call Sound Off, our weekly column of community comments, at 352-337-0368 to share your opinions.
• If elected officials wish to have any additional special taxes approved by the Alachua County voters, they need to get the School Board to provide a comprehensive update on the progress of school renovations paid for by the school tax approved several years ago. Was the new Terwilliger school in that plan, and what is the plan for the old Terwilliger school? There’s a lot of money at stake here, and the public needs to have an update.
• As a staunch Republican, Mildred Russell had a problem with the free and fair election for School Board and was concerned with a lack of Republican ballots in High Springs. She was trumped so badly in the election, it was like a football team losing 63 to nothing and blaming it on a questionable offside call in the first quarter.
• I wish Dr. Scott Rivkees could return and serve as Florida surgeon general. He is ethical, pragmatic, compassionate and makes medically sound decisions.
More Sound Off:
Callers question lack of GOP ballots in Alachua County, offer opinions on other issues
Callers comment on addressing the teacher shortage, Florida prisons and more
Callers comment on enforcing speed limits, housing the homeless and more
• For the third month in a row, Florida had more COVID-19 deaths than anywhere else in America. Floridians, please stop believing DeSantis and Trump. Look at the hard, cold facts. They don’t lie.
• When our Rep. Cammack votes in Congress, her votes closely follow the radical MAGA ideology — that is voting to throw out legal ballots of citizens in other states, voting against reducing the cost of Medicare drugs, against expanding broadband Internet to residents of her district and against reducing the federal budget deficit. Cammack ought to be proud of her votes, but her bizarre campaign ads simply say she hates chickens. That implies it’s the chickens who care about the wellbeing of her constituents.
• I listened to our President Biden (on Sept. 1) ... and, sadly, he told me I was a terrorist. If I’m not for everything he’s for, I’m a terrorist. I’m for low inflation; I guess terrorist. I’m for secure borders; terrorist. I’m for fentanyl not coming across the border in record numbers; terrorist. I was for a peaceful get-out of Afghanistan instead of having 13 American military members killed, not to mention about 25 other people mortally wounded without arms, legs, eyes; so I guess I’m a terrorist.
• Trump and so many others are spreading new lies now that the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge, Timothy Thibault, buried the Hunter Biden laptop case. First, that investigation was opened in the Baltimore field office, and is still ongoing. Before returning, Thibault worked in the D.C. office, and it wouldn’t be his call to shut down a high-profile investigation anyway. That authority would lie with the higher-ups, such as the assistant director of the FBI.
• We all need to get together and call all of the companies who are not lowering prices on grocery items or making packages smaller and smaller. All these manufacturers are enriching themselves on us and blaming COVID and gas prices. Why? Our country is on the mend with lower gas prices and lots of available jobs and housing cost getting lower, so why are these manufacturers of products not conforming to bringing back lower food costs?
• One of the flooding causes is the failure of the cities and counties to require retention ponds to be maintained. These ponds gather silt from over the years that greatly reduces the ability of them to collect runoff from a rainstorm. Any retention pond over 10 years old probably needs to be dredged.
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Calls on the old Terwilliger, Mildred Russell, Scott Rivkees and more
