In Covid19 crisis citizens help, elected officials fail the homeless

All Talk, No Action in protection for the homeless

Carrie Seidman's Easter Sunday editorial points to the abject failure of Sarasota County and the City of Sarasota to mount any sort of coordinated,, effective response to the Coronavirus crisis now affecting the homeless as well as everyone else here.

Andrea Buscemi posted this regarding Streets of Paradise, a citizen group helping the homeless during the Covid19 pandemic:

Good morning everyone! Feeling disheartened by this? Well there is something you can do!

COVID 19 has shut down a lot of our homeless friends resources for food. Some volunteers had been trying to fill that void by providing meals 7 days a week.

We have been so lucky to have some help but we are still coming up short. Below is a list of items we desperately need to continue feeding our friends 7 days a week. Also please know we are following the strict guidelines set forth during this stay at home order to keep ourselves and our friends safe.

If you wish to donate you can go to www.streetsofparadise.org and mention “for food supplies” in the “notes” portion of the donation. Thank you all so much. You can also donate via Facebook by visiting the Streets of Paradise Inc. page.

Items needed:

~Granola bars
~Water
~bread
~meat and cheese for sandwiches
~peanut butter
~Jelly
~chips
~mustard
~mayonnaise
~sandwich bags

All items can be dropped off at your convenience to:
3044 Bay St., Sarasota FL 34237

I'd like encourage everyone to join the Streets of Paradise volunteers group to stay current on volunteer opportunities available to help the homeless community in Sarasota.

Cathy Bryant, Greg Cruz, Devon Oppenheimer, and Angel Mendoza Williams are some of the amazing volunteers who lead and organize this group. You can reach out to them with more questions.

Streets of Paradise has ongoing efforts to help feed the homeless.

New: LTE 4.15.20 regarding Board inaction.

Argus District 5 Sarasota Candidate Forum 4.9.20

Three candidates for the District 5 seat on the Sarasota County Commission address questions from the Argus Foundation on a variety of issues. 

District 5 is generally the southernmost district, including much of North Port.

The candidates in alphabetical order are Ron Cutsinger (R), Chris Hanks (R) and Alice White (D). Argus executive director Christine Robinson asked the questions.

The zoom session has not been edited in any manner, but simply replays the video posted by Argus to YouTube.

Questions for District 5 Candidates from the Argus Foundation

BOARD of Sarasota County Commissioners POLICY AGENDA 2020:

Top Priorities 

• Future of County Administration Location j
• Medical Examiner / Coroner / Emergency Services Building
• Mote Funding: If, When, How
• Affordable and Workforce Housing
• Solutions to Ensure Wastewater at AWT Standards
• Modern Mobility/Transit

High Priorities 

• Bay Park Conservancy 

• Sports Tourism Development Strategy: Goals, Best Practices, Report with Options, County Role and Direction 

• Progress on Design and/or Funding for “Gap” Roads 

• Road Resurfacing: Service Level, Direction and Funding Increase Decision 

• Stormwater Policy and Management: Direction, Project Priorities and Funding Mechanism 

1. Here [above] is the County Commission board policy agenda for 2020. This was set by the commission at their December 2019 retreat.  Do you agree with this list? What do you think is the most important issue for the county and what would you specifically do to tackle that issue?  What is the most important issue for your district and what would you do to tackle that issue?

2. Businesses have been shut down or severely scaled back due to COVID-19.  Do you believe county government has a role in jumpstarting the economy when we open back up for business?  Why or why not? If you do, what would you do to jumpstart the economy?

3. What is your opinion of CRAs (Community Redevelopment Agencies), and how well you think they have worked in Sarasota County?  Would you expand this program in other areas of the county? If so, how many areas? If so, how would you make up for the loss in tax revenue to the general fund?  If not, what can be done to help blighted areas of the county?

4. What is your opinion of the county property tax rate and what area of the county budget do you think we spend too much on, what area too little on? 

5. Give the county a grade on their relationships with the municipalities?  What would you do to further improve the relationships?

6. Water Quality.  There are many aspects to it - Septic to sewer, stormwater run-off, advanced wastewater treatment, agriculture, old infrastructure, fertilizer run-off, sewer spills, red tide, etc.  What area of water quality do you think the county should be focusing its attention and funding on and why?

7. Do you believe the county has kept its promises to North Port with the extension of the Legacy Trail?  What would you do as a county commissioner to ensure that the Legacy Trail extension to North Port is completed expeditiously?

8. What is your opinion on growth?  What, if anything, should be done to stop or control it?

9. According to the county, in fiscal year 2020, Sarasota County will spend $9,011,146 in budgets to Health and Human Services, 12th Judicial Court Administration and the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office for mental health and supportive services. Of the local mental health and supportive services Sarasota County funds, the county's contribution represents approximately 24% of the total $36,984,582 spent. The remaining funding is contributed by multiple partners, including Federal and State grants, local philanthropic organizations, private donors and insurance.  What is your position on the proposed mental health care district in Sarasota County- would you create it, what should it look like, and would you increase taxes to provide more money for the district?

10. Transportation is an important issue in Sarasota County.  The county is coming up with a modern mobility plan. What do you think of eliminating SCAT routes in favor of modern mobility?

Sentinel: Detert helped Rick Scott devastate Florida unemployment

Note: Confirmed by an Orlando Sentinel editor: In the April 6 editorial below, "she" is Sarasota County Commissioner Nancy Detert, who when a state Senator co-sponsored a disastrous unemployment bill:

Meet the lawmakers who helped Rick Scott gut Florida’s unemployment system | Editorial

By ORLANDO SENTINEL EDITORIAL BOARD

ORLANDO SENTINEL |

APR 06, 2020 | 1:07 PM

Rick Scott instigated the movement a decade ago to deny unemployment to the unemployed, but he couldn’t have done it without help.

Republican lawmakers were squarely behind the the newly elected governor’s agenda in 2011, passing a sweeping unemployment compensation law designed to punish workers who lost their jobs — “slackers and malingerers” as one state senator [Nancy Detert] put it at the time.

She [Detert] perfectly summarized the contempt some felt for the unemployed, which led to the overwhelming passage of a law that:

• reduced the number of weeks someone can collect unemployment to as few as 12,
• required workers to prove they had contacted five potential employers each week,
• expanded the types of fireable offenses that disqualified an employee for benefits, and
• cut benefits if an employee received severance pay.

Workers also were forced to apply for benefits online, which was bad under the existing computer system and calamitous today under the one Scott’s administration replaced it with.

As others have observed, it was a system designed to help business by failing workers, those “slackers and malingerers.”

Read the entire April 6th editorial here.

Detert was also explicitly referenced in a March 23, 2020 Sentinel article entitled: The workers who sustain us during the coronavirus crisis deserve Florida’s respect:

We’ve built a rigged economy, particularly in Florida, where people in this ongoing crisis are among the most essential workers, alongside police and firefighters and doctors and nurses. 

How has this state treated them before now? 

Our lawmakers have been dead-set against a meaningful increase in the minimum wage, prompting a successful campaign to get a $15 an hour minimum wage on the ballot this fall. 

They refused to do anything about businesses failing to offer paid sick leave, and then passed a law that stopped communities like Orange County from doing something on their own. 

Dist. 3 Commissioner Nancy Detert

Over the course of a decade, they skimmed nearly $2 billion from a fund that was supposed to provide money for affordable housing.

In 2011, urged on by then Gov. Rick Scott, they stacked the deck against workers trying to collect unemployment benefits. The Legislature cut the number of weeks unemployed workers were eligible for unemployment — to as low as just 12 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate — and made it easier for employers to deny benefits. All this while keeping one of the worst weekly benefits in the nation — $275 max. A Republican state senator at the time, Nancy Detert, said she wanted to be rid of “slackers and malingerers.”

More on Florida's appalling unemployment predicament:

Herald Tribune 5.25.12: Nancy Detert with Doug Holder sponsored the unemployment bill 

And from Lloyd Dunkelberger in the Florida Phoenix 4.7.20:

FL Senate Democrats urge changing eligibility date for jobless workers denied help because of a broken benefits system

Dirty water, dirty politics and a whole lot more: April Critical Times

Critical Times 4.1.20



- Download the entire free issue of the April Critical Times here -

There's a lot in it - local vouchers schools, city elections, candidates for the County Commission, Transition Sarasota, composting, abolishing corporate personhood, New College Merger, 2020 Florida Legislative Session, more...

No April Fool

Here is Gov. Ron DeSantis's Executive Order EO 20-91, which shuts down the non-essential, after defining it rather broadly:

A helpful summary is offered here by the Herald Tribune.


Sarasota County -- with one of the oldest citizen demographics in the nation -- has this Covid-19 page. So far, we don't see anything new from the county's last public guidance.


For a comment on a former Florida Governor's medieval agenda, see this citizen post from Dren Greer.


Kidding aside, some prudential thoughts on keeping safe in a time when erring on the side of caution can go astray amid the endless rolls of toilet paper.


See also: The latest edition, digital only, of Critical Times is here.

Good advice in a time of Coronavirus

Statement from an epidemiologist. Please share widely.

Becky Ayesh shared this, and medically expert people have assured me it's spot on. The author Jonathan Smith of Yale can be found here.

* * *

Hey everybody, as an infectious disease epidemiologist, at this point feel morally obligated to provide some information on what we are seeing from a transmission dynamic perspective and how they apply to the social distancing measures.

 Like any good scientist I have noticed two things that are either not articulated or not present in the "literature" of social media.

Specifically, I want to make two aspects of these measures very clear and unambiguous.

 First, we are in the very infancy of this epidemic's trajectory. That means even with these measures we will see cases and deaths continue to rise globally, nationally, and in our own communities in the coming weeks.

Our hospitals will be overwhelmed, and people will die that didn't have to.

 This may lead some people to think that the social distancing measures are not working.

They are.

They may feel futile.

They aren't.

You will feel discouraged.

You should.

 This is normal in chaos. But, this is normal epidemic trajectory. Stay calm.

 This enemy that we are facing is very good at what it does; we are not failing. We need everyone to hold the line as the epidemic inevitably gets worse.

 This is not my opinion; this is the unforgiving math of epidemics for which I and my colleagues have dedicated our lives to understanding with great nuance, and this disease is no exception. We know what will happen; I want to help the community brace for this impact.

 Stay strong and with solidarity knowing with absolute certainty that what you are doing is saving lives, even as people begin getting sick and dying. You may feel like giving in. Don't.

 Second, although social distancing measures have been (at least temporarily) well-received, there is an obvious-but-overlooked phenomenon when considering groups (i.e. families) in transmission dynamics. While social distancing decreases contact with members of society, it of course increases your contacts with group (i.e. family) members.

 This small and obvious fact has surprisingly profound implications on disease transmission dynamics.

 Study after study demonstrates that even if there is only a little bit of connection between groups (i.e. social dinners, playdates/playgrounds, etc.), the epidemic trajectory isn't much different than if there was no measure in place.

The same underlying fundamentals of disease transmission apply, and the result is that the community is left with all of the social and economic disruption but very little public health benefit.

 You should perceive your entire family to function as a single individual unit; if one person puts themselves at risk, everyone in

the unit is at risk. Seemingly small social chains get large and complex with alarming speed.

 If your son visits his girlfriend, and you later sneak over for coffee with a neighbor, your neighbor is now connected to the infected office worker that your son's girlfriend's mother shook hands with.

 This sounds silly, it's not. This is not a joke or a hypothetical.

 We as epidemiologists see it borne out in the data time and time again and no one listens.

 Conversely, any break in that chain breaks disease transmission along that chain.

 In contrast to hand-washing and other personal measures, social distancing measures are not about individuals, they are about societies working in unison.

 These measures also take a long time to see the results. It is hard (even for me) to conceptualize how 'one quick little get together' can undermine the entire framework of a public health intervention, but it does.

 I promise you it does.

I promise. I promise. I promise.

 You can't cheat it.

People are already itching to cheat on the social distancing precautions just a "little"- a playdate, a haircut, or picking up a needless item at the store, etc.  From a transmission dynamics standpoint, this very quickly recreates a highly connected social network that undermines all of the work the community has done so far.

 Until we get a viable vaccine this unprecedented outbreak will not be overcome in grand, sweeping gesture, rather only by the collection of individual choices our community makes in the coming months.

 This virus is unforgiving to unwise choices.

My goal in writing this is to prevent communities from getting ‘sucker-punched' by what the epidemiological community knows will happen in the coming weeks. It will be easy to be drawn to the idea that what we are doing isn't working and become paralyzed by fear, or to 'cheat' a little bit in the coming weeks.

By knowing what to expect, and knowing the importance of maintaining these measures, my hope is to encourage continued community spirit, strategizing, and action to persevere in this time of uncertainty.

=======

For comparison:

Jonathan Lewis, Sarasota County Administrator, offers his explanation of why Sarasota County is not observing rules advised by those who know.

LTE on Rick Scott's claim that the Trump "bailout" is too generous

Your Friday, 3/27, Trib article, “Scott: Bailout is too generous to jobless,”  included a quote in which Senator Scott stated that "$600 weekly payouts would disincentive people from returning to the workforce.”

I understand incentives but the more I try to understand Scott's assumptions concerning disincentives and how and why they work, the more confused I become.

Especially as I recall the startling payout, $9.88 million in a one-time payout settlement and $350 million in stock, Scott received in 1997-98 when he became ‘jobless' at his departure from Columbia HCA.

His payout certainly didn’t disincentivize him as he went on, as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, to buy, run and create a string of companies and then to become the Governor of Florida and last year its junior U.S. Senator.

Perhaps the amount of the payout is key to whether it will incentivize or disincentivize someone:

        - $6 a week would do neither and would only allow someone to buy a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

        - $60 a week for a family of four or a single mother isn’t enough to move anyone either to or away from working.

        - $6,000 a week might very well disincentivize someone from work and move them to an early retirement in Sarasota.

        - But a $180,000 a week($180,000 x 50 = $9,000,000) payout did just the opposite and moved Scott  to double down and expand his business and professional activities.

Using Senator Scott as the model of what could be done in a bailout to really energize and motivate the jobless, the Congress should have increased the weekly payout.

Dren Geer
Osprey, FL

====

Ed's note:  On the horrific legacy of Rick Scott, see also:

‘It's a sh-- sandwich': Republicans rage as Florida becomes a nightmare for Trump

State parks close due to virus

As of today, March 23, all STATE parks are closed as well as all beaches.

DEP Notice regarding State Parks closing in FL

At the Celery Fields, birds are modeling correct social and physical distancing:

Human visitors to the Celery Fields are advised to follow their lead:

County advisory at all parks

Meanwhile, construction continues at James Gabbert's nearby Waste Transfer Facility:

Construction on the Gabbert WTF Monday 3.23.20

March update on Conservation efforts for the Quads parcels

News from the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast: 

Via a conference call on Thursday, Christine Johnson updated progress on the Quad parcels and other projects.

Quads: The CF has met three times with County staff and there is confidence they will have permanent easements in place by the beginning of summer on the three parcels (1,2,4) which the County has agreed to give in perpetuity.

• Parcels 1 and 4 - the Eastern quad parcels - are to be left natural for the most part. Johnson did say there could be some work to bring the canal that runs between the SE parcel and the Celery Fields to a better level of development. I.e., it has paths where people walk, run, bicycle - these might be improved.

• Parcel 2 (SW) could have some development component that would allow for parking. One of the major issues with the entire area is how little parking and other welcoming facilities are there for visitors.

Once these easements are in place, the property will be left to the CF and Audubon to develop and maintain. It is anticipated there will be no county funding. Here's where the community is likely to be invited to step up and help out.

The Foundation is also working toward solutions for other properties, including the giant Orange Hammock near North Port. The latest on this 5,500-acre site is that the CF has until June 1 to come up with $1.5 million for it. Johnson said this is a key project in that it not only means fewer homes, but also protects drinking water, serves as animal habitat, protects against floods, and still offers recreative and eco-tourism uses. Amazingly, Johnson says the CF is already 41% on its way to the $1.5 million needed. More here.

Updates on other projects, including Bobby Jones, the Felts preserve, and more - can be found via links here.

Celery Fields looking West

A community blueprint for water quality

a blueprint for

water quality improvement

to stop feeding

harmful algae blooms

As many know, Jon Thaxton and Steve Suau were two of the key people behind the creation of the Celery Fields Water Management facility quite a few years ago.

They're still concerned with water, and will be giving several talks on the results of a year's research on nutrients in our soil, and how they affect our bays and waterways. It's a wake-up call for us all. 

Jon and Steve will be at the Robert L. Anderson Administration Center in Venice this Tuesday (March 10) shortly after 1:30 pm presenting to the Board of Sarasota County Commissioners.

Also on Tuesday, they'll do a broader version of their work at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Venice at 7 pm. It's at 1971 Pinebrook Rd, Venice, Florida 34292.

UPDATE: The March 10 Venice presentation is now online, introduced by Brian Kelly of Hands Along the Water:

Update: CONA has postponed this meeting: And they'll be presenting at CONA Sarasota on Friday March 20, at 7, at the Waldemere Fire Station.

Slides they'll show can be found here -- but come to hear the interpretive commentary -- water quality affects us all.