A round-up of Sunday editorials from Florida’s leading newspapers:
Tampa Bay Times — Hard truths behind rosy job numbers
Friday’s jobless report was good news for the nation and for Florida, as the unemployment rate continues to fall and the broader economy shows signs that the sputtering recovery is at least holding together. But the outlook on jobs, incomes and housing in the Tampa Bay area paints a far more complete and unsettling picture for the region. Gov. Rick Scott and local leaders need to charter a smarter course to ensure the economic rebound is an opportunity for all.
Florida’s unemployment rate fell to 6 percent in October, a six-year low, as the nation’s jobless rate also dipped to 5.8 percent in September. The 34,400 jobs Florida added was the third-highest monthly gain across the nation, following only California and Texas. Tampa Bay’s jobless rate improved to 6 percent, down from 6.2 percent, as the region added 7,500 jobs. The October numbers helped Tampa Bay add 19,800 jobs year over year, though the bay area continues to lag other Florida metro areas in job creation.
Friday’s numbers move in the right direction, but they are only a snapshot, and they obscure some fundamental weaknesses that make for a still tough local economy. The region’s soft jobs market (going from first to fifth as a jobs creator among the state’s major metro areas), its tepid income gains and its resurgent housing prices all contribute to a tougher climate for many to make ends meet, much less to pursue the financial stability of home ownership.
A study released this month shows that Tampa Bay’s median household income ranks dead last among the nation’s 25 largest metro areas. The area’s income is about 10 percent less than the second-worst city, Miami, and nearly half as much as the highest-income metro area, Washington. The wage gap leaves middle-income families short of the money needed to buy even an average-priced home. And for all the jobs gains, data released Thursday by the U.S. Commerce Department show that income growth in the bay area is far behind the national average. That lag in purchasing power comes as home prices on both sides of the bay continue to rise. This all points to a squeeze on the working class and a tough environment for residents to spend, invest and save.
The Bradenton Herald — Manatee County gets steal of a deal on wetlands restoration project
This deal looks like a steal: Trade 5.16 acres of wetlands along Interstate 75 for up to 100 acres of wetlands restoration work at Duette Preserve. Manatee County’s enthusiasm for this agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation stands to reason.
With the pending diverging-diamond project at the University Parkway intersection with the interstate, FDOT will be destroying 2.88 acres of forested wetlands and 2.28 acres of herbaceous wetlands and the state must mitigate this loss. Instead of purchasing expensive interstate frontage property for that purpose, FDOT intends to restore damaged Duette Preserve wetlands.
The 23,000-acre preserve provides a natural water filtering system in a part of the county that provides the highest quality and quantity of deep groundwater into the Floridan Aquifer.
Plus, the preserve sits almost completely within the Lake Manatee Watershed upstream from the Lake Manatee Reservoir, a key drinking water source for Manatee and Sarasota counties.
All along, the county planned a multimillion-dollar restoration project of 75 to 100 preserve wetlands, but now will save some $2.5 million thanks to state mitigation payments, should the agreement gain final approval. Plus, the project’s start date will be considerably sooner.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal — DSC needs to find more dynamic leader
By voting not to renew President Carol Eaton’s contract, the Daytona State College Board of Trustees on Thursday made an emphatic statement not just on her past performance, but also her ability to lead into the future.
It was a dramatic turnaround from the positive reviews the president received from the board in May during her annual evaluation. What changed? DSC’s low ranking among all state colleges and Eaton’s defensive response to it and the state’s pay-for-performance standards, as well as an ongoing impasse with the University of Central Florida.
Before the board voted 8-1 last week to allow the president’s contract to expire in August, several members expressed dissatisfaction with the school’s lack of progress. Trustee Garry Lubi, who cast the lone dissenting vote, argued Eaton, who was hired in 2011, needed to be given more time to get the job done. But it was clear that the majority lacked faith in her leadership skills.
It’s not that Eaton has made a mess of things. Indeed, she inherited many of the problems DSC is facing. Rather, it’s doubt that she is the person who can bring various elements together inside and outside the school to solve the issues.
The Florida Times-Union — Pension board should turn down fourth retirement benefit for Keane
The Police and Fire Pension Fund has been more than fair to administrator John Keane. Now board members should start thinking of the taxpayers.
The pension board is scheduled to meet Friday to consider a fourth source of retirement funds for Keane. This jaw-dropping benefit has caused anger at City Council and outrage among the readers of the Times-Union.
As outlined by reporter Eileen Kelley in Sunday’s Times-Union, the city’s top appointed officials generally are given three choices for pension benefits: the city’s general benefit plan, a 401(k) plan or Social Security.
But Keane is no typical appointee. In his mind, he is equivalent to the CEO of JEA or JTA or JAA, which accounts for Keane’s generous salaries.
You would have to look far and wide to find any official of a taxpayer-supported agency who receives three retirement funds. Keane receives his firefighter’s pension, a special account that the city general counsel declared as illegal and Social Security.
Now the board is expected to consider yet another pension for Keane.
Florida Today – FSU shooting shapes life for thousands
Our landline at home rang just after 1 a.m., which is never good. In retrospect, it was the call middle-aged parents pray to get from their children in the middle of the night:
“Dad! There’s been a shooting at the library! I think people are dead!”
“Where are you!? Are you safe?”
“Yeah! I had just left the library …”
My daughter, a student at Florida State University, was among those outside Strozier Library who heard something that sounded like firecrackers — then ran in fear. Like others, she stayed up all night retweeting posts and shaky cell-phone video from friends locked-down inside.
Images showed college kids huddled between rows of books.
“There’s been a shooting in the library,” someone says over a PA system in one video. “Stay where you are … If anybody has been shot, call 9-1-1 on your cell phone.”
The crime statistics will show that one gunman, probably mentally ill, shot and wounded three innocents on the ground floor early Thursday, then died from police gunfire outside.
The Gainesville Sun – Homeless support
This is a difficult time of year to lack shelter, so thankfully recent events show the community is bolstering its support for the homeless.
Near-freezing temperatures this week led local homeless shelters to provide extra cots. The indoor shelter at the one-stop homeless center, Grace Marketplace, has been open since Oct. 1.
The center has struggled through financial issues that delayed the opening. While it still faces a budget deficit of about $15,000 per month, there are signs that help is on the way.
The center’s oversight board recommended the city and county allocate another $250,000 in funding. Private citizens are also contributing through events such as an open house and benefit last Sunday.
Community members were able to plant trees, make donations and join a new Friends of Grace Marketplace group to provide additional support. The event also included a worthy honor for local resident Hazel “Sister Hazel” Williams for her work with the homeless.
Tonight, Grace Marketplace has another fundraiser with a Battle of the Bands behind Boca Fiesta restaurant in downtown Gainesville. On Thanksgiving, Five Bar Gainesville is hosting a benefit feast.
More information on contributing and volunteering can be found on the Grace Marketplace website, http://gracemarketplace.org.
The Lakeland Ledger — Polk State Needs An Assist
Colleges and universities are among the powerhouses in any community. With seven located here, Polk County has a depth of educational opportunities, from Polk State and Keiser colleges offering everything from training for technical jobs to bachelor’s degrees; to Florida Polytechnic, Florida Southern and Southeastern providing students with knowledge from engineering to the arts; and Webber and Warner universities focusing on agriculture, business and so much more.
Each deserves our attention, and each has donors and boosters who make possible expansions like the one Southeastern University just announced.
But state colleges that serve a growing number of students, most entering straight from Polk high schools, often need an extra assist. That’s why Polk State College is starting early — it already has its legislative priorities set for the session that begins in March.
The college’s funding needs are hefty but critical:
$3 million to finish the Center for Public Safety near the Sheriff’s Office between Lakeland and Winter Haven.
The Miami Herald — At long last, action
To judge from all the commotion aroused by President Obama’s executive order on immigration, it would seem that he had unilaterally declared a wholesale and unlawful rewriting of the nation’s immigration laws.
Except that he didn’t.
After years of saying that he preferred legislative action over executive action to reform the nation’s flawed immigration system, the president correctly decided that getting both the House and Senate to act was a pipe dream. If anything, his decision to proceed should give lawmakers an incentive to override his action by doing their jobs in the very way that the president recommended: “Pass a bill.”
At least one Republican figure on Capitol Hill with a background on immigration matters seemed to agree.
After Mr. Obama’s speech, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, said he, too, was disappointed with the president’s action, but he suggested this would also put pressure on the president to sign a Republican-passed bill touching on reform, even if loaded with provisions Mr. Obama would not favor.
The sad reality, however, is that no such bill is likely to emerge from Congress anytime soon, and most Republican comments condemned Mr. Obama for acting on his own.
The Orlando Sentinel — Another jewel in region’s crown shines downtown
This week’s grand reopening of Orlando’s 78-year-old Citrus Bowl stadium kicks off another new set of opportunities for entertainment and economic development in Central Florida.
Today’s college football game between rivals Florida A&M and Bethune Cookman universities, known this year as the Florida Blue Florida Classic, has been drawing fans from near and far to the Citrus Bowl and giving a boost to businesses in the region since 1997.
But with a $207 million top-to-bottom, rapid-fire reconstruction nearly complete, the stadium is now in much better shape to hold on to its annual lineup of the Florida Classic, two college football bowls and other sporting contests, while adding more major events.
Once again, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and then-Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty deserve credit for having the vision in 2007 to hammer out an agreement to dedicate a share of taxes paid by tourists for three downtown venues, including the Citrus Bowl. The stadium, originally a Works Progress Administration project dating to 1936, had reached an embarrassing state of decay.
Dyer and Crotty’s successor, Teresa Jacobs, also are due kudos for working together in 2012 to resurrect the stadium’s extreme makeover after it had been delayed for several years by the Great Recession. And last year, in another deal, the mayors upgraded the renovation and lined up funding for a Major League Soccer stadium scheduled to open for the 2016 season.
The Ocala StarBanner — Jobs not enough
Gov. Rick Scott announced Thursday that his second inauguration, on Jan. 6, will be preceded next month by “job jamborees.”
The events, Scott stated, “will highlight some of our growing Florida businesses and also be an opportunity to celebrate our economic progress while focusing on the work we have left to do in the next four years.”
Scott added that the focus of his administration will remain on “three things — jobs, jobs and jobs.”
The governor’s attention to job growth has been good for both his political career, the state and many of its residents.
Yet a recent, thorough report — a project of United Ways in Florida and five other states — offers a stark reminder that having a job does not ensure economic survival. The report is the product of a wide-ranging study by the ALICE Project. The acronym stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.
One purpose of the study is to determine how many people who are employed consistently struggle to afford the basic costs of living — housing, care for family members (children and seniors), food, transportation, health care, taxes and some miscellaneous expenses.
The answers are: a lot and too many, especially in Florida. In Florida, the ALICE Project found 20 percent of households earn less than what’s needed to reach a “household survival budget” — an average of $47,000 annually for a family of four.
The Pensacola News-Journal —Stars and bars mark accuracy
With emotion, sentiment, even ancestral pride, Escambia Commissioners still fly the embattled Confederate St. Andrews Cross Battle Flag. In December their agenda will fire up the Old Fevered Flag issue that long ago prompted the City of Pensacola and
its cultural institutions and neighboring Southern coastal cities to more accurately fly the national CSA banner, known as the Stars and Bars. Like trying to rename historic Alcaniz Street within the Old Spanish city for Martin Luther King, Jr., citizens, scholars and history buffs respect true historical legacies, documenting accuracy of the failed Confederate symbols when America ruptured into North and South.
No, this is not about the brothers’ bloodshed from Fort Sumter to Appomattox; not about gross misapplication of Southern-proud Confederate symbols feeding separation of the races from the First Reconstruction to the Second Reconstruction—the civil rights crusade. African Americans feel the scars of the Battle flag, stolen as the bloody symbol by hordes of Klu Klux Klan lynchers from the 1920s until the mid-20th century.
No, this is about historic flags that Southerners flew in Pensacola.
Squeeze out the emotion.
The Palm Beach Post — Begin work now to beautify the county’s neglected zones
Never mind the November chill in the air, Palm Beach County’s real estate market is warming up nicely, with home prices surging and developers buying.
Most encouraging are some of the plans to burnish the county’s urban corridor. Streets more friendly to bikes and pedestrians are in the works in West Palm Beach and along Jupiter’s A1A; and attractive and affordable condos and apartments are contemplated near the Florida East Coast railroad tracks in West Palm Beach.
Meanwhile, investors envision transforming that city’s South Dixie Highway area into an artsy cultural and restaurant district with shades of Greenwich Village, according to The Palm Beach Post’s Alexandra Clough.
This kind of urban beautification improves the tax base and frees up money to make additional community improvements. It doesn’t happen by accident.
This is an ideal moment for Palm Beach County commissioners, and city and community leaders to mobilize and start the process of transforming other long-neglected zones throughout the county. Some pose tough engineering and design challenges; many cross jurisdictions. But much can be done through
Here’s our urban renewal (short) wish list:
1) Blue Heron Boulevard east of Interstate 95, from Garden Road east to Broadway
Plantings near I-95 have improved the street close to the highway, but a bit farther east, wall-to-wall concrete and rundown housing dominate. There are so many good reasons to invest in beautification of this street. Florida Power & Light’s spiffed up manatee viewing area is slated to open in 2015 at its power plant. Redevelopment plans for Riviera Beach’s Marina District will attract tourism. Rybovich’s Riviera Beach facility is slated to become a super-yacht servicing area. Riviera Beach should plan on fanning the flames of success. Hire planners who can design a more attractive and inviting city front door, and work closely with county agencies like the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the state delegation to see that it happens.
The Panama City News-Herald — Rosetta’s astounding star trek
We’ll start by acknowledging a stark fact. The landing of a tiny probe on a comet hurtling through space, one of the most astonishing technological feats in years, was not the work of America’s space program. It was a project of the European Space Agency.
But don’t let that bother you. Think of it as a HUMAN achievement — one not defined by geography or politics but representing mankind’s unquenchable desire to reach farther and learn more.
And reach far it certainly did.
After spending 10 years in space and traveling 4 billion miles, zooming three times around Earth and once around Mars just to pick up speed, the unmanned spacecraft Rosetta sent the probe — dubbed Philae and about the size of a washing machine — to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The comet at that moment was 311 million miles from Earth and traveling at 41,000 mph.
The landing occurred last Wednesday. Philae almost immediately began sending back to Earth pictures of its new home: a small, cold world of rocky crags and fissures.
If you think you’ve seen this before, you probably have. The 1998 sci-fi movies “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” both showed astronauts trying to land on an inhospitable hunk of space rock. The movies made the task look extremely dangerous.
The Tallahassee Democrat – Lawmakers likely to try again on pension reforms
There is probably no management concept more often cited, or more frequently disregarded, than that old saw, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Maybe it’s the nature of powerful, busy, important people — legislators, for instance — to never leave well enough alone. After all, if you give me the authority and ability to change something, maybe I’m not doing my job if I don’t change something.
Thus, it appears we will hear more about the Florida Retirement System in the 2015 legislative session. This time, though, it appears that legislators are not going to let their wishes get in the way of their political capabilities.
Shortly after formally assuming his office, House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said last week that he has heard from some members who remain interested in overhauling the FRS. Whether anything happens next March, when the session convenes, will depend on the Senate – where past pension proposals have died.
The situation is this: The FRS has a $22 billion unfunded liability, with assets equal to about 86 percent of its overall liabilities. Legislators put up $500 million a year to keep the system going, and the conservative Republicans who run the House and Senate (and governor) would like to use that money for other things —schools, ports development, environmental restoration or (what really makes their hearts go pitter-patter) more tax breaks for the folks who write campaign contribution checks.
Words like “unfunded liability” sound scary, but the FRS is not in any trouble. Actuaries consider anything above 80 percent to be a healthy funding ratio. It’s a little like your home mortgage — if you had to pay it off tomorrow, you might have a problem, but that’s not going to happen.
The Tampa Tribune — Obama’s immigration actions fly in face of democracy
Fixing the country’s broken immigration system should be an open and deliberative process that involves give-and-take among the many voices in search of the best solutions.
That’s the proper way to move the country forward on this divisive issue.
But that’s unlikely to happen now that President Barack Obama has acted alone. His executive actions have inflamed his opponents in Congress while offering only a fleeting reprieve for fewer than half of the 11 million immigrants in this country illegally. By acting now, rather than giving the new Congress a few months to consider reforms, Obama all but ensures that the immigration debate drags on beyond the 2016 elections without substantive reforms.
Why would Republicans, just weeks after a midterm election that repudiated the president’s policies, work with someone who ignores their pleas and calls them out on national television?
It’s not that we disagree entirely with the substance of the executive actions. Deportation protections will be extended to the parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, provided those parents have been in the country for five years. And a program that protects from deportation the children of immigrants brought here illegally will be expanded. The measures are meant to keep families together. Obama also is targeting for deportation illegal immigrants who commit crimes or only recently crossed the border.
