Citizen Jane will try to post daily, but may not be able to do so on a regular basis .

Taken from Sloans' 'good morning' website. He reminds us all that we should be thankful for people like: Ron Miller, Kay Thacker, Diane Bureldsen, John Hammerstrom, Tom Milone and Sandy Downs.

*Sloan as prophet*] Sloanbama* *is something Sal Gutierrez tagged me with on his somewhat irreverent website, keylargokey.com, after I advocated “civil insurrection,” such as Ron Miller once chaining and padlocking himself to the old Jewfish Creek Bridge, to protest what ended up being put there instead. If you ask me, Ron is a prophet, getting himself held in contempt of a federal court for what he truly believed in.

If you ask me, Kay Thacker, whom Sal also slaps around a good bit on his website, is a prophet, for risking getting herself tossed in the clink by Monroe County Mayor Mario DiGennaro, for repeatedly letting him and his other two gang members know in county commission meetings just how wrong she felt about what they were goose-stepping.

If you ask me, Diane Bureldsen, another pretty face on Sal’s dart board, who, like Kay, faithfully appears before the County Commission and other pubic boards/commissions, is a prophet, for never giving municipal officials and profiteers like Ed Swift and Jim Hendrick’s good friend Pritam Singh a moment’s rest.

Ditto for John Hammerstrom and Tom Milone, and the aforesaid Ron Miller, who bone up on the issues and faithfully and relentlessly ride heard on our elected and appointed officials. Ditto for a lot of Keys people who stand up and speak out without regard for the feedback or hell they might catch in return.

Sandy Downs comes to mind as someone who did something I never heard of anyone else being crazy enough to do. She took Attorney Carey Goodman and her family, and the Monroe County Sheriff Office, and the State Attorney Office head-on, not even wearing a gun or a badge, or even having a law degree, or a friend in this world outside her own family willing to publicly stand beside her, until she met this redneck Polack lawyer drop out transplant from Alabama.

Maybe Sal Gutierrez doesn’t know that when we root for the Crimson Tide back in sweet home Alabama, we sometimes holler real loud, “Go Bama, go!” Today'sFloridaKeysDrivel <http://goodmorningfloridakeys.com/?cat=3>

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Has anyone thought of renaming the toll road running through the middle of Pasco and Hernando counties the "Cone Porkway?''  You know, the toll road that came online at just the right moment, when cheap gas and easy money converged to unleash a perfect storm of developers and speculators gone wild.

Oh, the bubble was sweet while it lasted; no questions asked, no money down, just hope and hype because the market couldn't be wrong. Don't worry. Be happy. Go shopping. Go out to eat. And you can always refinance!

That big toll road, slicing like a can opener for 42 miles through virgin land, cost about $1-billion. Its official purpose was to alleviate traffic on U.S. 19 and U.S. 41. By the way, how is the traffic there these days?

But you know the real purpose: Build it and they will come.

Every day you now live with what happens when they build it without any thought for the future or the quality of life of the poor suckers already on the ground. Never mind the schools are packed like sardines and there is an unending water crisis. Never mind that impact fees for new construction do not begin to cover the costs of new infrastructure and minimal services. Perhaps, like so many others, you are upside down in your little piece of paradise, owing more on your house than it is worth. Add to that jobs far from the sprawl frontier and gas surpassing $4 per gallon.

Did anyone have a Plan B?

Which brings me back to the giant toll road, officially called the " Suncoast Parkway ." You probably missed the news that Michael Cone, former head of Cone Constructors, the general contractor for the Suncoast Parkway , is now serving a 20-year sentence for defrauding the Department of Transportation and committing bankruptcy fraud. Even his wife is in federal prison for fraud.

Ten years ago I represented the Sierra Club in an ill-fated lawsuit regarding the toll road, which paved hundreds of acres of wetlands and unleashed a tidal wave of sprawl. The court ruled we waited too late to file the case and that the mitigation for the destruction wrought by the toll road was adequate. That mitigation is the Serenova Preserve, truly a jewel of our ecological heritage, a piece of old Florida supposedly "saved" for generations yet born.

Today, Serenova is fine, if you don't think about the Ridge Road extension, a four-lane highway Pasco County is desperate to run right through the middle of it. Pasco will mitigate the mitigation.

The toll road was my great education in Florida land use. I learned one big thing: Florida land use is just politics. It's the votes of five county commissioners. In most places it takes only a majority to vote "yes'' and change the community forever.

During the bubble, Pasco and Hernando commissioners just wouldn't say no to the endless, shiny development dreams. What were they thinking? Clearly, the power to change the local growth plan is just way too much power concentrated in the hands of five people.

Understanding this inevitably led me to Florida Hometown Democracy, the proposed constitutional amendment that will put comprehensive plan changes approved by a county or city commission to referendum before local voters. Voters should have the final say over changes to their community's growth plan because you are the ones who must live with the consequences.

Someone wise recently observed that the measure of a civilization is not merely what it creates, but also what it refuses to destroy. And we must learn from mistakes and undertake genuine reform. Do you really want more of the past?

Watching the BOCC meetings, I have noticed that it is mostly George Neugent and Sylvia Murphy who ask pertinent questions. The rest of them just sit there.

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What I look for in this upcoming election, are the commissioners or candidates who stand up for the people. Shortening the bus shuttle services for the elderly or handicapped, closing of Bay Shore Manor and shutting down libraries will not get my vote. But I do want to hear the candidates talk about this topic, because these services and many others are desperately needed in our communities

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I made $21,000 last year. Many people who work in the Keys are in the same income level. To think that a county staff employee should get a salary close to or over $100,000 is absurd! When you realize that the majority of county administrators make almost, or over $10,000 a month is throwing away good money from us tax payers. And the county is now talking of raising taxes? I do not want to fund these super salaries!

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Happy 4th of July everyone. Remember, this country and our county is worth fighting for! I love your motto you have put up on your front page from Ms. Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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Peace to All, love and happiness

The words to the patriotic song, America the Beautiful, are by Katherine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College. In 1893, Bates had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem. On that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the 4th of July. It quickly caught the publics' fancy. Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1913.

Several existing pieces of music were adapted to the poem. The hymn tune, composed in 1882 by Samuel A. Ward, was generally considered the best music as early as 1910 and is still the popular tune today. Ward had been similarly inspired. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City after a leisurely summer day, and he immediately wrote it down. 

Ward died in 1903, not knowing the national stature his music would attain. Miss Bates was more fortunate, as the song's popularity was well-established by her death in 1929.

Ray Charles is credited with the song's most well-known rendition in current times [although Elvis Presley had good success with it in the 1970s]. His unique take on it places the third verse first, after which he sings the usual first verse. In the third verse, the author scolds the materialistic and self-serving robber barons of her day, and urges America to live up to its noble ideals and to honor, with both word and deed, the memory of those who died for their country.

July 1, 2008

Two big bucks items - that the County is missing for potential savings

1. Copy machines. There are huge Xerox copy machines in almost every office in the County. The last Director of Technical Services pissed off a commissioner's aide (guess which) by suggesting that they share a machine with the Marathon Airport. Nope. Didn't happen. "Too much confidential information" said the aide, in an office governed by Florida Sunshine laws. (Little do they know that investigators can snoop at any time, copying their "confidential information" for anything run through the machine to a disk drive--The marvels of modern technology!) Now, both this commissioner's office as well as the Marathon Airport pay thousands per year /each/ for a lease for 40,000 copies per month for a shiny new Xerox machine and a total of almost 1,000,000 pages per year from /one building/! Do you think they're actually copying that many? Nope. Not 10% of that, I'd guess. There are 4 or 5 of these Xerox machines at every facility. the county is paying for millions of sheets of paper per year that they're not using! Budde's Office Supply is one of the highest paid vendors of the County. County employees have tried to buy copy machines competitively and Budde goes nuts and calls every commissioner every time the issue is raised. Soulition: Get rid of all but one copy machine in each building and save $100,000 or more per year - two employee's jobs. Make those big ass county employees walk a few more steps.

2. Telephone maintenance. There is a full time technician from AT&T that is on site at Monroe County for which the County pays over $120,000 per year. He's made a career there and has worked there for more than 20 years. Yes, onsite at Monroe County as an employee of Bell South, now AT&T. He's a great guy, but the County has likely paid more for his services than any other single employee. Considering the fact that he brings his own tools and truck, $120k isn't a terrible deal, but I know of no organization of fewer than 1,000 employees /anywhere/ that has a full time tech who does nothing but telephone and wiring work. Get rid of this contract by invoking the non-funding provision of the contract and bid out for a pay-as-you go contract for service. The huge Nortel switches the County owns have capacity for four times the current size. The County bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of options that have never been implemented by AT&T and it is hopelessly outdated. There are piles and piles of purchased and unused telephone equipment lying in rooms all over the County. There are a number of local wiring and computer companies who would love to have this contract or get wiring contracts and save the County thousands.

The County should follow the School Board's lead, who implemented a telephone system that is much less expensive to operate and gets rid of expensive customer AT&T services. If you don't believe any of these things, file a Sunshine request with the Clerk of Court for information about BellSouth AT&T payments and payments to Xerox and Budde's. The smoking guns are there.

A technical services director was fired about a year ago for, among other things, raising these issues of waste to the previous Administrator's attention. Gee, no one wants to look bad, do they? Let's see if the new Administrator has the guts to clean this up.

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On the 6:00 PM radio news, Don Riggs of US 1 Radio reported Mayor Mario said today that all the branches of our county library will remain open. Budget cuts will not result in the closure of any library branch, but hours of operation may need to be cut back.

If you have not had a chance to send an email to our commissioners, you may want to do so to reinforce the public outcry against closing even one of our library branches.

Thank you, we have made a difference!

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Did any happen to hear the broadcast on US 1 Radio, when Spehar was on the program? She let the cat out of the bag by saying the developer who wants to buy the Hickory House Restaurant was offering $100,000.00 less than what we tax payers paid for it which was $3.2 Million! What a deal Spehar...if you vote for that deal, it is a shame and you have taken our money and squandered it. Spehar is not even a property tax payer, she resides on a houseboat, so what does $100,000.00 mean to her? Spehar voted along with the other members of the "Gang of Three" to allow 8 months for the developer to make up their minds if they wanted to purchase the property(option to purchase) without any earnest money down. That put the property out of the reach so it could not even be listed to sell to anyone else. The developer has offered public access to the water, (50 years lease) hello folks we own the water access, but the developer will only charge $25.00 to put your boat in and $25.00 to take your boat out...watch and see if the water access comes up before the BOCC to abandon it to the developer the County ownes that water access. Remember this one folks when you go to the Polls on August 26 to vote. Make sure you vote Spehar and McCoy OUT!

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You must be a registered Republican to vote for Carlos Rojas,(R) Sylvia Murphy, (R) and Kim Wigington (R). You have to change from your party if not a registered Republican and re-register your party no later than 29 days before the primary, so that you can vote for these candidates, which is August 26, 2008.

Please, please - from now on, edit the poster who wrote the above post, or else teach him/her to use grammar check.

Nobody can understand the poster's points because they are written so poorly, they actually become incorrect information.

Regarding the first sentence, the correct information is that only registered Republicans vote in the Republican primary (which is 8/26/08).

The poster's 2nd sentence makes no sense at all. The correct information is that if you want to vote in the Republican primary, you must be registered as a member of the Republican party by July 20.2008. If you do not want to continue as a registered Republican after the Republican primary, change your party registration by 9/26/08 to whatever party you choose.

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Regular posters on this site all drink from the same cesspit and I know this and don't expect one vote from any of you on this site. I just love to screw with you..... "Go Gang of Three" Can't wait to join you so we can improve the business climate in this county and keep the tree huggers from trying to turn this place into a big park that we the tax payers will end up paying for and in most part doing right now.............Enjoy Sal

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*THE ISLAND OF KEY LARGO FEDERATION OF HOMEOWNER*

*ASSOCIATION’S IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT THEY WILL HOLD TWO CANDIDATE FORUMS. THE FIRST WILL BE THE PRIMARY ELECTION CANDIDATE *

*FORUM AT THE KEY LARGO LIBRAY MEETING ROOM, (TRADEWINDS SHOPPING*

*PLAZA MM101.4 OCEANSIDE) WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2008. MEET AND GREET *

*BEGINS AT 6:30 PM, THE FORUM WILL BE AT 7:00 P.M. SHARP!*

*THE SECOND, WILL BE AT THE SAME PLACE, SAME TIME AND WILL BE *

*WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8,2008** FOR CANDIDATES IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.*

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There are two big bucks items that the County is missing for potential savings.

*1. Copy machines*There are huge Xerox copy machines in almost every office in the County. The last Director of Technical Services pissed off a commissioner's aide (guess which) by suggesting that they share a machine with the Marathon Airport. Nope. Didn't happen. "Too much confidential information" said the aide, in an office governed by Florida Sunshine laws. (Little do they know that investigators can snoop at any time, copying their "confidential information" for anything run through the machine to a disk drive. The marvels of modern technology!)

Now, both this commissioner's office as well as the Marathon Airport pay thousands per year EACH for a lease for 40,000 copies per month for a shiny new Xerox machine a total of almost 1,000,000 pages per year out of ONE BUILDING! Do you thing they're actually copying that. Nope. Not 10% of that, I'd guess. These deals were done individually by each department, "under the radar" by the use of a lease appoved by a County other than Monroe!

There are 4 or 5 of these Xerox machines at every facility. THE COUNTY IS PAYING FOR MILLIONS OF SHEETS OF PAPER PER YEAR THAT THEY'RE NOT USING! Budde's Office Supply is one of the highest paid vendors of the County. County employees have tried to buy copy machines competitively and Budde goes nuts and call every commissioner every time the issue is raised.

*Solution:* Get rid of all but ONE copy machines IN EACH BUILDING and save $100k OR MORE per year - two employee's jobs! Make those big ass county employees walk a few more steps! 2.

*2. Telephone system maintenance*There is a full time technician from AT&T that is on site at Monroe County for which the County pays over $120,000 per year. He's made a career there and has worked there for more than 20 years - yes, onsite at Monroe County as an employee of Bell South, now AT&T. He's a great guy, but the County has likely paid more for his services than any other single employee.

Considering the fact that he brings his own tools and truck, $120k isn't a terrible deal, but I know of FEW organizations of fewer than 1,000 employees who has a full time tech doing nothing but telephone and wiring work.

*Solution:* Get rid of this contract by invoking the non-funding provision of the contract and BID OUT for a pay-as-you go contract for service. The huge Nortel switches the County owns have capacity for FOUR TIMES the current size, the County bought TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars worth of options that have NEVER been implemented by AT&T and it is hopelessly outdated. There are PILES AND PILES of purchased and unused telephone equipment lying in rooms all over the County. Call your commissioner and ask for a tour of the telephone rooms in the Gato and Harvey buildings, the Marathon EOC, Courthouses and the Ellis buildings. Ask, like I did, "whats this?" and you will find Hundreds of
Thousands of Dollars worth of Unused Junk. Time for an eBay auction!

There are a number of LOCAL wiring and computer companies who would love to have this contract or get wiring contracts and save the County thousands. The County should follow the School Board's lead, who implemented a telephone system that is MUCH less expensive to operate and gets rid of EXPENSIVE customer AT&T services.

If you don't believe any of these things, file a Sunshine request with the Clerk of Court for information about BellSouth AT&T payments and payments to Xerox and Budde's. The smoking guns are there.

And a certain technical services director was fired about a year ago for, among other things, raising these issues of waste to the previous Administrator's attention. Gee, no one wants to look bad, do they?

Let's see if the new Administrator has the balls to clean this up, but beware - the Deputy Administrator and the Telecommunications Administrator say that they're "close personal friends" but, of course, that would, "never affect their working relationship."

Yeah, right.

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Library closings - At least try to change the commission’s mind by sending an email letting them know we need our libraries to stay open. It’s easy, and takes only five minutes of your time. Just click on the links and write “Please keep the libraries open.”

McCoy - boccdis3@monroecounty-fl.gov <mailto:boccdis3@monroecounty-fl.gov&gt; (305)-292-3430

Mayor DiGennaro - boccdis4@monroecounty-fl.gov <mailto:%20boccdis4@monroecounty-fl.gov&gt; (305)289-6306

Murphy - boccdis5@monroecounty-fl.gov <mailto:boccdis5@monroecounty-fl.gov&gt; (305)852-7175

Neugent - boccdis2@monroecounty-fl.gov <mailto:boccdis2@monroecounty-fl.gov&gt; (305)872-1678

Spehar - boccdis1@monroecounty-fl.gov <mailto:boccdis1@monroecounty-fl.gov&gt; (305)292-3440

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Library closing - It may be necessary for us to organize a protest* *demonstration in order to keep out libraries. I’d had to do it, but what else can we do? I think it’s time the commissioners give up their offices and staff. The libraries are used far more than they use their offices.

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Library closing- Consolidation is always the best way to conserve capital; look at big business. If you want to save money, close the commissioner’s district offices and let them have a desk and computer at the library branch. If it makes them feel better they can name the library branch after themselves (instead of having to build a new facility we can’t afford to hang their names on).

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http://fixmonroeflorida.blogspot.com/ Good website to go and vote and see the results.Citizens are sick and tired of the "Gang of Three". Make your vote count.